TECH DAVIS – Terror at Compass Lake. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1935.

   Occasionally when I am on the fringes of a group of diehard mystery fans — which is about as close as they’ll let me get — the name Tech Davis is mentioned. Then when I am spotted, the subject is immediately changed.

   Why this happens I do not know. Oh, I know why I’m allowed only on the fringes; it’s their not wanting me to hear about Davis that baffles me. While Davis is not a good author; he isn’t an exceptionally bad one.

   His prose doesn’t elevate, indeed may be said to enervate. His detective, Aubrey Nash, is so bland that I wish he’d been given the one or two idiosyncrasies that I usually deplore in other fictional detectives whose creators can’t seem to make come alive. But he does plot well.

   In this novel, the first of three by Davis, Aubrey Nash is asked to come to the wilds of upstate New York to investigate the apparent suicide of a chauffeur — it must be suicide since everyone has a perfect alibi — and the later stabbing death of his employer in a locked room. Nash isn’t interested until he receives a telegram telling him the crime is insoluble and he shouldn’t waste his time with it.

   Recommended for locked-room fanciers, and other problem solvers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mystery fiction by TECH DAVIS, pen name of Edgar Davis (1890-1974). Series character: Aubrey Nash in all.

      Terror at Compass Lake. Doubleday, 1935.
      Full Fare for a Corpse. Doubleday, 1937.

      Murder on Alternate Tuesdays. Doubleday, 1938.

Editorial Comment:   Just in case anyone is tempted by Bill’s last line into putting together a complete set of all three Tech Davis mysteries, there are five copies of his books currently listed on ABE. Four of them are of Compass Lake, available at $75 and up, and there’s one of Full Fare, the latter having an asking price of a fairly solid $250.

   And not a single copy of Alternate Tuesdays.

UPDATE. 01-08-12.   Thanks to Bill Pronzini, I can now show you cover images for all three Tech Davis mysteries, in jacket.

REX HARDINGE – The Case of the Frightened Girl. Sexton Blake Library #247. Paperback original. [Amalgamated Press, UK, 3rd series, September 1951.]

   The basic premise of this short novel, 64 pages of small type in a double-column format, was promising – in fact, more than promising, if “impossible crimes” are meat if not potatoes in your regular diet of detective fiction reading.

   The girl in the title is Moira Leonard, a girl with a fabulous singing voice, but with a overbearing Svengali of a manager and singing instructor. After her public vocal debut, she cracks under the strain she’s been under and flees the music hall. Max Rosen follows her, argues with her, and ends up dead, stabbed in the back, with plenty of witnesses to say there she was the only one near their final (and fatal) confrontation.

   But when the body is examined there is no murder weapon to be found. The girl must have done it and taken the knife with her. Sexton Blake does not believe she did the deed, however, nor does his young assistant Tinker, especially the latter, even though she has disappeared, and into literal thin air.

   This takes us through the first eight or nine pages. We also learn that Ron Pearce, a would-be lover of Moira – they grew up together in the same orphanage – would have also had a motive, but the absence of the weapon clears him.

   So as I say, a promising premise, but once we learn that Pearce is the one responsible for kidnapping Moira, there is little more I need to tell you about the story.

   Rather than a detective story – until the end when the “how” is revealed – this is a thriller novel, and not a very good one. There is too much padding, too much recapitulation of the plot, and too much chase and too little suspense to give me little reason to recommend this to you, unless you’re curious about knowing what a Sexton Blake novel was like in the early 1950s. Or at least what this one was like, as I was.

   And oh, as for the “impossible crime” aspect? Totally mundane and not very believable at that. [See Comment #1 for more!]

HAMLET. Columbia, 1969. Nicol Williamson (Hamlet), Judy Parfitt (Gertrude), Anthony Hopkins (Claudius), Marianne Faithfull (Ophelia), Mark Dignam, Michael Pennington, Gordon Jackson, Ben Aris, Clive Graham. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Tony Richardson.

   I also recently saw Nicol Williamson’s 1969 film of Hamlet, directed by Tony Richardson, made on the heels of Zeffirelli’s surprise Romeo & Juliet hit. Didn’t care much for it, but I was prejudiced two-score years ago by the film’s banal ad campaign, which billed it as “The story of Hamlet’s immortal love for Ophelia!”

   Now Hamlet is about a lot of things, but it ain’t about Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, and this slant on the film, intentional or not, put me off on it right from the outset, no doubt clouding my judgement somewhat.

   Williamson plays Hamlet as a bookish Grad Student, Weak rather than Vulnerable and Pedantic instead of Poetic. It’s a valid interpretation, but not much fun to watch for two hours.

   Likewise Judy Parfitt’s portrayal of Queen Gertrude as Lady MacBeth. Marianne Faithfull is okay as Ophelia, but an incredibly young Anthony Hopkins, looking like a kid in a false beard, is woefully out of his depth as the King.

   This is very much a late-60s film, with the kids in revolt against corrupt and complacent authority figures, which again is a valid interpretation, but robs the play of some of the depth and complexity it gets when characters like Polonious, Claudius and Gertrude are developed as rounded characters.

   Finally, there are no sets to speak of (this looks to have been shot in the back of UCLA’s Theatre Department Building) and Richardson tries hard to hide this by concentrating on close-ups and restricting physical movement, which works but stifles the action.

“Punchy Cowpunchers” (1950). A Three Stooges short. Running time: 17 minutes. Shemp Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Jock O’Mahoney (Elmer), Christine McIntyre (Nell), Kenneth MacDonald (Dillon), Dick Wessel (Mullins), Vernon Dent (Colonel), Emil Sitka (Daley), George Chesebro (Jeff, uncredited). Written and directed by Edward Bernds.

   The Three Stooges are definitely not for all tastes, so if you don’t like slapstick comedy just skip this review.

    “Punchy Cowpunchers” spoofs just about every cliche hitherto found in Western films: the outlaw gang looting the town; the stalwart, jut-jawed, guitar-playing, “aw shucks!” hero; the virginal love interest for the hero; and the U.S. Cavalry ready to ride in on a moment’s notice and save the day.

   Only the outlaws (“The Killer Dillons”) aren’t too bright — and neither is our hero (Elmer), a total klutz who can’t stay on his horse, constantly collides with objects and people (“I hurt mah knee agin”), forgets to load his guns (and when he does remember can’t shoot straight), and, let’s face it, doesn’t play his “geetar” very well.

   As for his “gal” (“Nell honey”), she’s far from being the “poor, defenseless woman” she claims to be. When one gang member after another tries to kidnap her (for nefarious purposes, no doubt), she decks them all and then each time demurely passes out — but not until she’s found something soft to land on.

   And forget the cavalry — they just got paid, and as the colonel says, “Well, you know, boys will be boys.”

    “Punchy Cowpunchers” takes the best of Stooges slapstick and distills it into less than twenty minutes of fast-paced nonsense. The only other short feature I really liked from these guys was “Dutiful But Dumb” (1941), a political satire featuring Curly’s epic battle with his supper, a bowl of chowder inhabited by a very rude clam (a masterpiece of timing and film editing).

   The klutzy “hero” was played by Jock Mahoney (1919-89), a former stunt man double for Errol Flynn, Gregory Peck, and John Wayne. Mahoney went on to appear many times in films and TV, including 77 episodes of The Range Rider (1951-53), 34 episodes as Yancy Derringer (1958-59), and several appearances in Tarzan films, sometimes as the villain and sometimes as the vine swinger himself. For a more intellectual Mahoney, see the sci-fi snoozer The Land Unknown (1957).

    “Nell honey” was played by Christine McIntyre (1911-84), who possessed an operatic-level singing voice (not employed in “Punchy Cowpunchers”). She spent most of her film career working in short features, many of them with The Three Stooges. She even appeared several times in Mahoney’s Western series, The Range Rider.

   Kenneth MacDonald (1901-72) frequently showed up in Stooges shorts as a bad guy. He went on to play the judge 32 times in the Perry Mason series, starting with the second show and finishing up with the very last episode.

   Mention should also be made of George Chesebro (1888-1959), whose film career started in 1915. Chesebro often appeared as a henchman (usually the third one through the door) or a cop. The IMDb credits him with over 400 titles.

   You can watch “Punchy Cowpunchers“ in two segments on YouTube: Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – Night Lady. Crest 260, paperback original, 1958. T.V.Boardman, UK, hardcover, American Bloodhound Mystery #307, 1960. Never reprinted in the US.

   William Campbell Gault got his start writing for the pulp magazines, beginning around 1940, maybe earlier, producing not only mystery stories and crime fiction, but doing a slew of sports stories as well. When the pulps faded away and paperbacks came along, he, as did many others, went with the flow. His first Joe Puma novel, Shakedown, was written under the name of Roney Scott as half an Ace Double in 1953.

   Then after a short hiatus came five Puma adventures in three years from Crest, then a hardcover novel, The Hundred-Dollar Girl, from Dutton in 1961. Gault switched to writing boys’ adventure fiction after that, and Joe Puma disappeared until The Cana Diversion was published in 1980 – about which more in a moment.

   In many ways Joe Puma is your standard medium-boiled kind of private eye. His bailiwick is Los Angeles and immediate environs, mostly the seedier side of town, mixing it up with former small-time hoods, chiselers, grifters and big-time mobsters, along with a wide assortment of women. Night Lady is Puma’s third appearance, and while I can recommend it to almost any devout fan of private eye fiction, I have some serious reservations about it, and it’s highly unlikely that any publisher would consider reprinting it today.

   I may totally wrong about this, but in terms of his writing, Gault seems to have been somewhat of a maverick, refusing to go along with the conventional, and veering off on occasion into strange, unusual ground.

   Take the following excerpt from the first couple of paragraphs from Night Lady, as a mild example. As any good pulp writer should know, the first few lines are the most crucial in sucking the reader into the story. They have to be good, clear, and picturesque. Not this time. Here’s Gault’s take on professional wrestling and the wrestlers themselves:

   What is “love of like for like”? It stumped me the first time I read it, and the second and third time, too. The words were there, but they didn’t make sense.

   You’re probably way ahead of me in knowing what Gault was saying, but to me, it was like running a race with hurdles, and suddenly the hurdles are too close together, you trip, and you knock down the next one, and suddenly you’re cartwheeling down the track, arms and legs swinging out in all different directions, thud, thud, thud – and it stopped me cold.

   And at the least, I wasn’t expecting this particular variety of deeply felt philosophy (page 23) to be expressed so abruptly and succinctly, not in the first paragraph. It caught me by surprise. I wasn’t an English major in college, and I avoided all of the English courses that I could, so don’t give me a letter grade on any of what I’m saying, but in any case, I think I flunked the first page.

   You’ve also noticed the reference to homosexuality. In terms of either political correctness or just plain good taste, there are some references to gays in this book that probably would cause some fuss if they appeared in most fiction today: lavender lads (page 9), weirdies (page 11), a pansy bed (page 14), homo (page 29) and the old stand-by, queer (page 49). The word “gay” itself is not used.

   Sometimes it’s Puma talking, sometimes it’s the people he’s talking to, without any particular rancor, other than the choice of words, but they’re there and they can’t be ignored. Someone else will have to finish this doctoral dissertation from this observation onward, however, not me.

   You’re still waiting for me to say more about The Cana Diversion, perhaps. I haven’t forgotten, but let me first take care of those people who want to know more about the case Puma is working on in this book. He’s hired by a successful show-business wrestler named Adonis Devine to find his business manager, who’s been missing for two days. The business manager, male, also lives with Adonis, which means calling in the police may cause some problems.

   When the missing man is found dead, the police do have to be called in, but since Puma does his best to stay on the good side of the law, he not only manages to keep a lid on things best kept hushed up, but he’s allowed to keep working on the case.

   Which he does, and not only that, he obtains a new client, a rich girl who Puma thinks is seriously slumming, given her previous relationship to the dead man, his connection with the crooked (well, fake) wrestling entertainment business, and his “double-gaited” life style.

   There is another girl involved as well, an eye witness to the killer’s departure, who is nice and who naturally needs Joe Puma’s protection. He’s kind of prickly about it, though. He’s a very class-conscious sort of individual. The women in this case, especially his new client and her friends, are high class group of people. Joe is lower middle class, and he quietly resents it. There is a chip on his shoulder throughout the book, not a nasty one, but a noticeable one.

   Unusual. It gives the story some oomph that lesser accomplished private eye writers wouldn’t include, an edge that Gault has that other authors don’t. As for the mystery itself, Puma does a lot of detective work, but on page 128, with less than 30 to go, he himself has to admit that he has no more leads to follow or suspects to interrogate.

   Then with some inspired guesswork and a curious slip on the part of the killer – there’s little the armchair detective at home could do to contribute – the case is solved, with still almost ten pages to go.

   More of Gault’s maverick writing nature at work. Instead of cleaning up the loose ends, as he easily could have, Puma takes the time instead to fight a grudge match with his original client, Adonis Devine, the wrestler. Over five pages worth.

   He also ends up in bed, just before that, with one of the two women in the case. I leave it to you to decide which one, or read the book for yourself. Given the caveats I’ve already expressed, Gault was a writer who always had something to say, and here as well, he’s definitely worth reading.

   Now. If you’ve never read The Cana Diversion, and you think you might want to, you might also want to stop here. It’s common knowledge, though, so it’s not as though I’m releasing the Pentagon papers.

   Gault’s other private eye detective was Brock “The Rock” Callahan, and when Gault starting writing mysteries again in the 1980s, he brought them together in the same book, The Cana Diversion.

   Unfortunately, what he did was make Puma the murder victim, leaving Callahan the task of tracking down his killer. No other author has ever done this, before or since. I don’t know about you, but the idea has always seemed awfully creepy to me, and I’ve never read the book. (That’s a purely personal reaction, and if I were to try to explain further, it would probably tell you more about me than either you or I would want to know.)

   And I realize, of course, that this leaves me open to widescale expressions of surprise and disdain, if not derison and dismay. In 1983 The Cana Diversion did nothing less than win the Private Eye Writers of America award for the Best Paperback Original of the Year. Sometimes it pays to go your own way.

Note: Thanks to Bill Crider, Richard Moore and Bill Pronzini for some insightful commentary they made on some preliminary versions of this review. The opinions as expressed above, however, remain as always, mine alone.

THE TURMOIL. Universal-Jewel, 1924. Emmett Corrigan, George Hackathorne, Edward Hearn, Theodore von Fitz, Eileen Percy, Pauline Garon, Eleanor Boardman, Winter Hall. Based on the novel (1915) by Booth Tarkington. Director: Hobart Henley. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   It’s probably difficult to appreciate the appeal Booth Tarkington had for earlier generations (which include mine). He’s probably best remembered as the novelist who provided the inspiration for Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons, but even earlier I read and reread his Penrod series, the story of an imaginative, adventuresome boy who did all the things that I, a dull, unimaginative, tradition-bound kid, never dared to do.

   The Turmoil, however, is more in the vein of the Ambersons and is the story of a successful father who tries to direct the lives of his three sons, with disastrous results for two of them.

   It’s a dark film that lacks the kind of riveting detail that a William deMille might have brought to it, but somehow manages to focus poignantly on the difficult road to manhood travelled by the third son, with a particularly fine performance by Eleanor Boardman as the young woman whose love he eventually returns.

NOTE:   The cover shown is that of the Grosset & Dunlap “Photoplay” edition, 1924.

MIGNON G. EBERHART – Murder in Waltz Time. Short novel; first published in The American Magazine, May 1953.

   This small gem of a detective story was reprinted in two of Mignon Eberhart’s later story collections, Deadly Is the Diamond (Random House, hc, 1958) and Best Mystery Stories (Warner, pb, 1988), and calling it a “short novel” is stretching it a bit, at best. Without resorting to counting words, I’d say it would run 60 to 100 pages in an ordinary paperback, depending on the size of type.

   As I’m sure you know, many of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe tales first appeared in this same format and in this same magazine and were collected later in hardcover in groupings of three or four.

   The American Magazine was always a favorite of mine as a youngster. I liked the cartoons, the photos, and the ads. Today I’m attracted to the same things, but now I like the stories and the artwork as well, plus the tidbits of interest about the movies, and items worth noting about radio and television stars and programs.

   As for Eberhart’s story, it’s a solid detective tale, necessarily boiled down to its pure essentials because of its length. No time for but the briefest characterization, and the motivations barely more. It takes place in a Florida resort where the dancing team of Fran Allen and Steve Greene are the featured attraction, and it’s Fran who finds the body of elderly Miss Flora Halsey.

   And as the investigation goes on, besides her nephew who was staying with her, more and more of the guests staying at the Montego House are found to have known Miss Halsey in the past, making Captain Scott’s job all the more difficult.

   Here’s a paragraph that appears toward the end of the tale. It doesn’t reveal the killer in any way, but *WARNING* it might tell you more of the plot that you’d rather know, but I think it’s entirely indicative of the kind of story it is.

   Don’t get me wrong. As a mystery writer, Eberhart was a pro, through and through, and while I feel I might be admitting something you may find a little strange, I found this story to be much, much more than minimally entertaining.

FRANCES MALM – The Woman Involved. Short novel; first published in The American Magazine, May 1953.

   There is no mention of Frances Malm in the current edition of Hubin’s bibliography of crime fiction, so unless she wrote tons of short fiction, I doubt that many readers today have ever heard of her. But since there’s more than one crime involved in this novella (my description) I’m reporting on it anyway — as I’m sure you’ve already noticed.

   In length “The Woman Involved” is somewhat longer than the one by Mignon Eberhart, or at least that’s my impression. Once again I didn’t count words.

   When a young woman, Dana Wallace, goes back home to settle her stepfather’s estate she finds, unexpectedly, both a mystery and a romance. A large sum of money is missing from Judge Poole’s checking account, and (with no apparent connection) a brash young man, on his way up and resented by the old guard residents of Middleford for doing so, offers to buy the property where the judge’s home is located.

   Dana does a more-than-decent job of detective work, discovering a number things she did not know about her stepfather, but the emphasis here is rather more with the battle of rich vs. poor in matters of status in small town America, and Frances Malm puts her finger precisely on a number of the sore spots that can arise as a result.

   A minor work, I’d have to truthfully say, and one that in all likelihood has never been reprinted. There’s no doubt that it’s mystery fiction, though, and it’s definitely worth reading.

PostScript. Frances had a sister named Dorothea Malm, who wrote a handful of novels published as gothic romance mysteries in the 1960s.

   The only “real” novel that Frances wrote that I’ve been able to uncover is World Cruise (Doubleday, hardcover, 1960; Cardinal, paperback, 1961). Here’s the cover description of the book, the Cardinal edition: “The compelling story of a beautiful divorcee seeking love and fulfillment on a luxury cruise.”

UPDATE. 01-01-12. My copy of this magazine has gone into hiding, and I’ve not been able to come up with a cover image, much less any of the interior art. Doing a Google search online, I did find a long partial description of the contents, however:

The American Magazine, May 1953. Vol CIV, No. 5. 144 pages. COVER: What’s Ahead for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor? Painting by Al Brule Articles include: AMERICA’S GLAMOROUS GODMOTHER Oveta Culp Hobby — the little woman who holds one of the biggest jobs in the US. A determined Texan, she looks out for the personal health and welfare of every one of us as US Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. by Clarence Woodbury; COVER ARTICLE: What’s Ahead for the Windsors? The Coronation next month may mean a new career for England’s jobless ex-King. By Roul Tunley. 5 page article; FUN TIME IN THE ROCKIES Canada beckons summer vacationists to its fabulous wonderland. By Richard Neuberg; A PEEK AT THE MOVIES of the MONTH; “Nature Girl” a short story by Elizabeth Stowe; “The Lie” a short story by Cynthia Hope and Frances Ancker; “Murder in Waltz Time” by Mignon G. Eberhart.

   Or in other words, a small time capsule of what life was like in May, 1953.

ELIZABETH CURTISS – Nine Doctors and a Madman. Simon and Schuster, hardcover, 1937.

   The subgenre of mysteries dealing with insane asylums seems to be few in number but high in quality. Now Curtiss’s novel can be added to the list, and it is a fine addition.

   One of the nine doctors at Brandmere Hospital is murdered by an inmate, or so it would appear. The inmate says he did it, is in a room alone with the corpse, and has the bloody skewer; the other physical evidence, however, contradicts his claim.

   Nonetheless, he must have done it since no one else in the hospital seems to have had the opportunity, though most of them had a motive. A simple mind, my mind, but I would judge that there’s tricky fair play here.

   Curtiss writes and observes well: “Her hair had been meticulously pinched and plastered into waves which would have turned a Greek sculptor green with envy.”

   Her detective, Nathaniel Bunce, M.D., whom the publisher describes as a psychologist but must be a psychiatrist, is a character who might have achieved greatness if he had appeared in more than two novels, assuming the second matches the quality of this one. [The second being Dead Dogs Bite (Simon & Schuster, 1937).]

   Describing the narrator of the novel, young and naive Dr. Theophilus Bishop, Bunce says: “Your mind … is like a kangaroo. It jumps, high, wide and handsome. It leaves, therefore, vast areas untrodden.”

ADDENDUM:

   For those who may be interested, the novels that I have read that have as a setting mental institutions or have reason to believe deal with that sort of establishment are:

Murder in the Madhouse, by Jonathan Latimer
The Deadly Chase, by Carter Cullen
Shock Treatment, by Winfred van Atta
Night World, by Robert Bloch
The Drowning Pool, by Ross Macdonald
The Goodbye Look, by Ross Macdonald
No Face in the Mirror, by Richard Copeland in the UK, Hugh McLeave in the US
Death in the Doll’s House, by Hannah Lees and Lawrence Blochman
Crazy to Kill, by Ann Cardwell
The Odor of Bitter Almonds, by James G. Edwards
A Mind to Murder, by P. D. James
The Spectacles of Mr. Caligostro, by Harry Stephen Keeler
Snow White and Rose Red, by Ed McBain
A Puzzle for Fools, by Patrick Quentin
Shadow of a Doubt, by June Thomson.

DEATH RAY 2000. NBC-TV Movie; aired 05 March 1981. (aka T. R. Sloane) Pilot for NBC-TV series A Man Called Sloane (1979-1980). QM Production/Woodruff Production. CAST: Robert Logan as Thomas R. Sloane, Dan O’Herlihy as The Director, Ann Turkel as Sabina, Maggie Cooper as Chrissy, Clive Revill as Erik Clawson, Ji-Tu Cumbuka as Torque, Michele Carey (voice) as Effie. Written and produced by Cliff Gould. Executive Producer: Philip Saltzman. Director: Lee H. Katzin.

   A gang of nuns walk into Gideon Peak Observatory where a scientist is testing a new top-secret “weather machine,” a device that can control the weather by removing all moisture from the atmosphere. The lone security guard informs them closing is in five minutes. The nuns, with the aid of Torque, a seven foot giant with a metal hand, dismantle the giant ray gun and take the large pieces out the backdoor to their van.

   Torque is most helpful when he substitutes a screwdriver for his index finger to remove some stubborn screws. The screws put up a better fight than the humans did, since security was virtually non-existent. When the scientist interrupts the heist, one of the nuns kills him with deadly thimble like devices on two of her fingers. The nuns and Torque with his Swiss army hand escape with the device.

   OK, I am hooked all ready. But this classic continues to produce more cheese than Wisconsin. Seems the ray gun is so powerful it can drain water for miles, through any object including mountains, and it can dehydrate people into nothing but bones and cute hair.

   Naturally the government is upset that someone has stolen a top-secret weapon that could destroy the world, a weapon they had left in a public building with only one friendly guard as security. They come to UNIT looking for help and begging for our hero Thomas R. Sloane.

   UNIT is a top-secret agency located in the farmlands of Kentucky where The Director works out of his house. This being a spy movie the house is of course not your typical home. It contains a six-ton computer named Effie, complete with a sexy female voice. And as all females in this story, Effie has fallen for the only man who can save the world, Thomas R. Sloane the 3rd.

   Sloane, following in the famous footsteps of his father, is a top secret agent and owner of Sloane & Sons, a successful art and antiquity business. We first meet the great spy as he successfully completes his mission in Cuba. He escapes the soldiers by rocketing an elevator through the roof and into the air where a waiting helicopter catches it.

   Robert Logan (77 Sunset Strip, The Adventures of the Wilderness Family) gives Sloane all the passion of someone wanting to take a nap. The rest of the cast is more animated, adding ham to all this cheese.

   The story travels the usual path, Sloane drives a great car, the evil mastermind has his pets (this time he cuddles with snakes and a spider), recurring fight scenes, sex interrupted or off stage (this is 70s TV), Rube Goldberg death traps, an evil organization named Kartel (“with a K”), and the villain meeting his end at his own hands.

   My favorite moment is when writer Cliff Gould (Mod Squad, Streets of San Francisco) makes his motives clear and uses cheese as a vital clue. Ian Fleming should be so clever.

   The most shocking twist didn’t come from the story, but the production credits for this cheese fest that would have made Aaron Spelling giggle. This was from Quinn Martin! The QM Productions of The Fugitive, The FBI, Cannon, etc.

   It was the final QM series to debut on television (Barnaby Jones would be the last on the air). There is no better example of how television changed during the seventies than compare Quinn Martin’s first series of 70s, Dan August (1970) to Quinn Martin’s last, A Man Called Sloane (1979).

   The movie was released on VHS but not on DVD. It can also be seen on YouTube in ten parts, starting here.

   There were changes made when this pilot lead to the series, A Man Called Sloane. Most notable was Robert Conrad replacing Robert Logan as Sloane and Torque the Swiss army hand bad guy becoming Sloane’s good guy sidekick.

MACBETH. Republic Pictures, 1948. Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy McDowall, Edgar Barrier, Peggy Webber. Adapted by Orson Welles (uncredited) from the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Orson Welles.

   On most occasions I need only the flimsiest of excuses to speak of Welles’ 1948 film of Macbeth, which he did for peanuts on the back lots at Republic Studios.

   Like most of his films, it was badly mauled before release, including completely new dubbing and the excision of about 20 minutes running time. It is now, however, restored and available on videotape, and you should run out and get it.

   Someone — me, I think — once said that every hardboiled novel and film noir owes a debt to Shakespeare. Welles seems to have sensed this, turning Macbeth into a very noirish-looking film indeed, with lots of shadows and heavy fog to hide the cheap sets, vaguely menacing blackmailers and detective-types, and a Lady Macbeth (Jeanette Nolan) straight out of James M. Cain.

   Edgar Barrier, normally a rather inexpressive actor, offers a fascinating interpretation of Banquo as co-conspirator, and Dan O’Herlihy makes a tough MacDuff. Welles naturally has a lot of fun with himself as Macbeth, lurching about drunk most of the time, and he has the whole cast speak in beautifully thick Scottish Brogue, so that “Sleep no more, Macbeth has murdered Sleep” comes out: “Slyeep nae Mairlrlrl, MaycBayth hae Mairlrlrlredairlrlrlred Slyeep!”

   A bit hard to follow in the denser passages, but fun to listen to.