WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS’ DORMITORY. Cineriz, Italy, 1961, released as Lycanthropus; MGM, US, 1963. Barbara Lass, Carl Schell, Curt Lowens, Maureen O’Connor, Maurice Marsac. Director: Paolo Heusch.

   Not nearly as salacious as the title would indicate, Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory is a surprisingly well-constructed Gothic horror movie. An Italian production featuring an international cast, the movie feels as if it’s an off-kilter amalgam of 1930s Universal Studios monster films, West German Edgar Wallace films, and early 1960s black and white horror cinema.

   Sure, it’s schlocky. But it’s undoubtedly effective in creating a claustrophobic setting in which a werewolf preys upon persons associated with a reformatory for girls who have gotten in trouble with bourgeois morality and the law.

   The trouble begins when Julian Olcott (Carl Schell) young, handsome physician is hired to teach science classes to the girls. Although the girls don’t know it, he has a shady past. Something about a young girl’s mysterious death at his last place of employment in Burlington, Vermont. But he’s seemingly a good guy and gets along well enough with the headmaster (Curt Lowens).

   Within his first week of being on campus, there’s a sudden brutal murder. One of the girls, who seemingly was blackmailing a faculty member over their illicit love affair, is mauled to death. Some suspect the groundskeeper. Others suspect a wolf in the forest. Even the police inspector is puzzled.

   Olcott teams up with one of his students, the inquisitive Priscilla (Barbara Lass) to investigate the strange happenings. Could it be that a werewolf is behind the mayhem? And what, if any, is Olcott’s connection to the deaths? After all, his field of scientific research prior to his employ at the school was (wait for it) lycanthropy.

   Now I’m not going to try to sell you on this film. It’s not for everyone. What it does, though, it does well enough to hold a viewer’s attention. I also think there’s also a strange undercurrent of sadness throughout the proceedings, a Central European fatalism that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until I read the biographies of two of the leads. Barbara Lass was born Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass in German-occupied Poland and was Roman Polanski’s first wife. Curt Lowens, who portrays the headmaster, was a German Jew who survived the Holocaust in hiding and went on to a lengthy acting career in which he often portrayed German soldiers.

   Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. But I felt as if both of these two actors conveyed, even if unintentionally, a certain world weariness, one that is difficult to put in words, but capable of being seen if one knows where to look.

         Friday, February 13.

20/20. ABC. [I believe the anchors were Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs.] I watched only the opening segment, concerning a scientific explanation of UFO’s. Well, at least it’s a possible one. It has to do with seismic activity, and a form of luminous electricity generated by quartz-containing material under extreme pressure.

   It’s still a theory, of course, but it does seem to fit a surprising number of cases. It sure makes a lot more sense than visitations by extraterrestrial creatures overcome by fascination for swamps, deserted highways, and isolated mountaintops. I mean, coming all that way and not even stopping off at Times Square?

NERO WOLFE. “Might as Well Be Dead.” NBC, 60m. Season 1, Episode 5. Cast: William Conrad as Nero Wolfe, Lee Horsley as Archie Goodwin, George Voskovec as Fritz Brenner, Robert Coote as Theodore Horstmann, George Wyner as Saul Panzer, Allan Miller as Inspector Cramer. Guest Cast: Gail Youngs, Bruce Gray, A.C. Weary, Michael Currie, Lana Wood, Stephen Elliott. Teleplay: Seeleg Lester, based on Rex Stout’s book of the same title. Director: George McCowan.

   According to tonight’s paper, it looks as though we’re not going to have this show to kick around much longer. Last week it came in 62nd in the ratings. Out of 64 shows. “Friday night’s a bad night,” Judy said. “Yeah,” I replied, “and look what it’s on opposite. Dukes of Hazzard. I don’t know what the attraction is.”

   Seriously, though, if this show flops, justly or not, it’s going to prove all those publishers right who say that detective fiction just doesn’t sell any more.

   Tonight was TV’s version of “Might s Well Be Dead.” When Wolfe discovers the son his client wants found right on the front page of his newspaper, the subject of “synchronicity” comes up. That’s the science of fortuitous coincidence, as you may not have already known. I’ll have to look into it.

   (I have to say it, but I completely failed to recognize Lana Wood when she appeared in a small part in this particular episode. I’m amazed. I don’t believe it.)

   Want to know what kind of joke makes me laugh? Jim Stafford was on Merv Griffin’s show earlier this afternoon, and the TV set happened to be on. He told the story of how, when he was a kid, when all the other kids were out playing football, he was busy practicing with is guitar. Practice, practice, practice. “But it all paid off,” he said, picking up his guitar and displaying it proudly. “I can kick this sucker sixty yards.”

DEPARTMENT Q – THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES. Denmark, 2013, as Kvinden i buret. Nickolaj Lie Kaas, Fares Fare, Per Sheel Krüger, Sonja Richter Teleplay Nicolaj Arcel, Jussi Adler-Olsen (his novel). Directed by Mikkel Nørgard. [The first film in the “Department Q” series, followed by The Absent One (2014), and A Conspiracy of Faith (2016).]

   Another fine example of Scandinavian Noir, based on Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels of Department Q, the closed case section of the Copenhagen police headed by damaged and difficult Chief detective Carl Mørck (Nicolaj Lie Kaas), an arrogant and sullen cop whose last two partners were killed and crippled in a case that left Mørck wounded and unable to work Homicide, the first of a series of made for television movies that are dark, violent, complex, and intelligent.

   In The Keeper of Lost Causes Mørck returns to work to find himself assigned to Department Q, in the basement, to work cold cases, basically spend two days on them and close them. His assistant is Detective Assad (Fares Fare), a Muslim, who like Carl has nowhere to go in the department.

   Carl hasn’t much hope for the new job until he discovers one of cases involves the disappearance of Merette Lyndgard (Sonja Richter) five years earlier. Merette, a government official, went aboard the ferry with her mentally disabled brother and at some point apparently committed suicide by jumping overboard.

   Carl wanted the case five years earlier when it was assigned to Bak, a detective he considers a moron. It never made sense to Carl that Merette would take her mentally unstable brother on the ferry with her if she planned to commit suicide.

   The bulk of the drama involves Carl and Assad probing deeper into the case bungled by their predecessor, their battles with superiors who don’t really want cold cases solved, just stored away, and flashbacks to what actually happened to Merette, all while Carl and Assad gradually become a trusting partnership. All while building an impressive line of suspense more reminiscent of a movie than something made for television.

   When Assad is able to get close to Merette’s mentally closed off brother Uffe, the two discover Merette’s suicide may have been something else entirely, and begin to put together a case that leads to a second murder in Sweden and a motive for incredible revenge that dates back to Merette’s childhood and the tragic accident that left her brother mentally crippled.

   If you hate subtitles, you may not care for these, but all three are dark and well written, pitting Carl and Assad (well played by Kaas and Fares) against dangerous killers who prey on the weak and the innocent. Each one is deeper, trickier, and more powerful than the last, without ever being exploitative or routine. Victims, police, and even the killers are wounded humans struggling to survive, twisted by and saved by their mere humanity.

   I will grant you that you would think Carl would learn to wait for backup, but it is established at the beginning of The Keeper of Lost Causes that isn’t his strong point, and satisfying as it is, they probably need to end one film without Assad beating the crap out of the bad guy after rescuing Carl, but this isn’t weekly television, and normally you probably would not watch them as close together as I did (and in all honesty Assad beating the crap out of these bad guys is a needed cathartic release by the time you get to the down to the wire endings).

   All in all this is superior police drama with a touch of the great detective in its lead, and plots you won’t lightly shrug off and that have a touch of Ross Macdonald to them in their portraits of wounded people doomed by sins of the past, with just a hint of Hannibal Lector in their truly frightening killers.

Note: The films are available currently on Hulu with English subtitles.

   “Error in the System” is the title track of German singer’s first album, re-recorded in English in 1983. Wikipedia says of Schilling: “[a] synthpop musician whose songs often feature science-fiction themes like aliens, astronauts and catastrophes. He is best-known for his 1983 hit single ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’ which was an international success.”

KALEIDOSCOPE. Wincast, UK / Warners, US, 1966. h Warren Beatty, Susannah York, Clive Revill, and Eric Porter. Written by Robert Carrington and Jane-Howard (Hammerstein) Carrington. Directed by Jack Smight.

   A thing of no consequence, but a diverting time-killer, this comedy-caper film in the style of Charade and Arabesque never gets really funny and seldom exciting, but radiates enough style to carry it along.

   Warren Beatty stars as Barney Lincoln, one of those characters you only see in the movies: rich, charming, virile, straight—and single. And if you can buy that, maybe you can accept the notion that he decides to cat-burgle his way into a playing-card factory and change the printing machines to mark the cards, then proceeds to tour the gambling palaces of Europe and win fortunes without getting banned and black-listed.

   He also meets his female counterpart, gorgeous, bright and single Susannah York, whose father (Clive Revill, in a charmingly eccentric characterization) is a Scotland Yard man with a use for Beatty’s talents.

   Enter Eric Porter in a splendidly over-the-top performance as Harry Dominion, master of a criminal empire, showy sadist with a Napoleonic complex and a nasty sense of humor. When he and Beatty go head-to-head, first at the card table, then at Dominion’s baroque castle, things pick up nicely for an exciting conclusion.

   â€œBaroque” may be the best word to describe Kaleidoscope, which came out in the midst of that mid-60s resurgence of highly-embroidered rock posters, music and neckties. Director Jack Smight, who made this in between Harper and The Secret War of Harry Frigg, fills it with artsy camera angles, rococo sets and scenery, and somebody decided to shift scenes by having the image break up into kaleidoscopic patterns — nice job, that.

   My theory is that after Dobie Gillis, Warren Beatty tried very hard to be a serious actor, and after the debacle of Mickey One, he retreated into lightweight stuff like this (originally slated to co-star Sandra Dee) and Promise Her Anything before bouncing back with Bonnie and Clyde.

   Whatever the case, everyone involved treats Kaleidoscope with the seriousness it deserves (not much) and the result is a pleasant time-killer. Nothing more, but nothing less.

T. T. FLYNN “Barred Doors.” Short novel. Mike Harris & Trixie Meehan #7. First appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly, May 18, 1935. Probably never reprinted.

   I may be wrong, but whenever female private eyes have come up for discussion on this blog, especially those who primarily appeared in the pulp magazines, the name Trixie Meehan has never been mentioned. It’s true that she always played second fiddle to Mike Harris, her fellow operative for the Blaine Agency, but she’s her own woman with her own cases, and the fact that every so often she’s able to give Harris a helping hand is no reflection on her ability.

   In “Barred Doors” Harris is given the job of tracking down the secretary who seems to have disappeared with a half million dollars worth of unregistered Liberty bonds taken from the safe of the agency’s client, Sir Douglas Carter MacClain.

   Naturally there is a gangster involved and the gangster’s ex girl friend, who has lately been seen gong out on the town with the missing secretary. There is a kidnapping involved, and a strange form of blackmail, or so it is revealed, but with both Mike Harris and Trixie Meehan on the case, everything eventually works out justice finally prevails.

   The story is suitably complicated and well told, but to me, there’s just not enough zip to it to make it more than just a step above average, but above average it most certainly is. There doesn’t seem to be anything of a romantic nature between Mike and Trixie, just a lot of light bickering and back-and-forth banter, nothing more serious than that.

   Having sold off a large number of my DFW collection, I may not get a chance to read another of their adventures, but I’d like to. There were sixteen of them between 1933 and 1951, all but the last published in Detective Fiction Weekly. That final one appeared in Detective Tales, some ten years after the previous one. (It is possible that this last one is a reprint of an earlier story under a new title.)

ROBERT RICHARDSON – The Book of the Dead. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1989. First published in the UK by Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1989. No US paperback edition.

   Fans of Sherlock Holmes pastiches will be pleased to know that the core of this third case of murder in which playwright Augustus Maltravers is involved is a newly discovered manuscript of “The Atwater Firewitch,” one written by Doyle himself and included in full in this book. Even better, it is sharp enough to have actually been written by Doyle, a statement that cannot always be made in cases such as this.

   When the current owner is found murdered, it is up to Maltravers to find the killer, which with some quibbles, he does in the best Holmesian tradition.

   Quibbles: I have to wonder why Richardson gave so much of the mystery away so early by telling us the thoughts of so many of the characters, including the one who’s guilty. This leaves Maltravers not knowing what we the reader know and having to deduce it on his own, which he does, and at the end of the book he reveals his thought processes, and in detail.

   But truth be told, the culprit is really a challenge only to the dullest reader. There’s plenty of puzzle remaining, however — how? and why? — and the enjoyment that comes from watching Maltravers put the pieces together is more than satisfying — that and the enjoyment, of course, of seeing how neatly the solution to the new Holmes “discovery” is woven into the heart of the story that surrounds it.

[FOOTNOTE]   Having thought about this some more, I can still see no real reason why we (the reader) had to know as much as we are given. If Richardson had told the mystery for the reader to have solved as well — and I think he could have — there’s no doubt in my mind he’d have had the best modern fair-play detective story that I’ve read in a long time. As it is, this one’s merely good, but not great.

         Thursday, February 12.

THE GANGSTER CHRONICLES. NBC, 13 episode mini-series. Episode 1. “An American Story.” Michael Nouri (Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano), Joe Penny (Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel), Brian Benben, Kathleen Lloyd, Madeleine Stowe, Chad Redding, Markie Post. Director: Richard C. Sarafian.

   Ten minutes after turning this on I found myself asking “Why am I watching this?” I couldn’t come up with any kind of answer, so I turned it off.

MAGNUM, P.I. CBS. “Lest We Forget.” Season One, Episode Ten. Tom Selleck, John Hillerman, Roger E. Mosley, Larry Manetti. Guest Cast: June Lockhart, Anne Lockhart, Miguel Ferrer, Scatman Crothers, José Ferrer. Writers: Donald P. Bellisario & Glen A. Larson. Director: Lawrence Doheny.

   Tonight’s show was both enhanced and handicapped by flashbacks to Pearl Harbor Day. (I assume you know that the show takes place in Hawaii.) Magnum’s client ts a judge who’s been nominated to the US Supreme Court, but he was once married to a Honolulu hooker, and he’s afraid of blackmail. He hires Magnum to find her.

   Working as a plus was the use of June and Anne Lockhart (mother and daughter) to play the lady, and José and Miguel Ferrer (father and son) to play the judge. But one does tire of stories taking place in Hawaii just before you-know-what happens. (You do, don’t you?)

   And without the advantages of instant replay, I still don’t know how Magnum spotted the killer — the only person to know that both parties in their ill-fated romance were still alive. How’d he know. (Either one of them.)

   The regular characters are solidly done. I especially like John Hillerman as Higgins, whose self-appointed job it is to keep Magnum in line. (Hillerma it also was, of course, who played the irrepressible Simon Brimmer in TV’s most recent version of Ellery Queen.)

   This is getting too long. I just wanted to add that I had a crush on June Lockhart, back 25 years ago when she played Jon Provost’s mommy on Lassie. My, but aren’t men fickle. Ah, Miss Lockhart, but don’t you have a lovely daughter!

MIKE PHILLIPS – Point of Darkness. Samson Dean #3. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1995. First published in the UK by Michael Joseph, hardcover, 1994. No US paperback edition.

   Phillips is new to me, though obviously not to everyone. The two previous tales about Sam Dean, a reporter of Anglo-Caribbean descent, have been set in London — Blood Rights and The Late Candidate. This, the first since 1991, takes place in New York City. Phillips also write the novelization of for the movie Boyz in the Hood.

   Sammy Dean is in the Big Apple to try to find the straying daughter of a boyhood friend dying in London. He’s no stranger to the city abd its Caribbean neighborhoods — Jamaica, Queens, the Bronx — but an outsider nevertheless, The girl had disappeared after working as a domestic for the aging parents of a high City official, and more people than Dean are looking for her — for reasons he doesn’t know. What seemed to be an uncomplicated if tedious and difficul task turns nasty, and he soon finds both himself and the object of his search in serious danger.

   This is blurbed as being “on the tradition of Walter Mosley.” Me, I’d have thought that Mosley was a few books shy of a “tradition” — but hey, whatever works. Phillips is a lot closer in tone ro Mosley than to Chester Himes or Barbara Neely, if that counts. Traditional or not, I liked it. Phillips seems to know his territory, and tells his story in first-person in an undramatic, semi-reflective way that I found appealing.

   The urban black/Caribbean world was new to me, and I thought he did an excellent job of painting its picture without slowing down the story. As I’ve said before, it would be foolish of me or any white man to try to judge the realism of black characters, but they seemed like real people to me, and believable and sympathetic ones. Phillips is a good writer with a different viewpoint.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   One online source describes the author as having been “… born in Georgetown, Guyana. He came to Britain as a child and grew up in London. He was educated at the University of London and the University of Essex, and gained a Postgraduate Certificate of Education at Goldsmiths College, London.” Another source calls Sam Dean a “Jamaican-born, London-bred, street-smart, sexy, self-effacing, tough, and likeable black journalist.”

   There was but one more book in the series, that being An Image to Die For (1995).

GOLD FOR THE CAESARS. Adelphia Compagnia Cinematografica / Films Borderie, Italy, 1963, as Oro per i Cesari. MGM, US, 1964. Jeffrey Hunter, Mylène Demongeot, Ron Randell, Massimo Girotti, Giulio Bosetti, Ettore Manni. Directors: André De Toth, Sabatino Ciuffini (Italy), Riccardo Freda (uncredited).

   Peplum par excellence. An Italian production with Andre De Toth credited as its director (there’s some dispute as to how much actual work he did on the film), Gold for the Caesars isn’t exactly the type of film that is rich in character development. Instead, it relies upon costumes, sword fights, and campiness to get its point across. And that point is celluloid escapism, pure and simple.

   Jeffrey Hunter, a long way from the set of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), portrays Lacer, a slave in the hands of Rome. He’s also an architect, responsible for aiding in the construction of a bridge in Spain. Enlisted by a local Roman leader to aid in the search for gold in hill country occupied by the Celts, he is forced to choose between a life of enslavement versus a chance to risk it all for freedom. Along the way, he falls for a Roman slave girl.

   That’s about it, to be honest. That’s the essence of the plot. But you know what? In an era of overwrought CGI productions, there’s something slightly charming about being able to watch an admittedly mediocre sword-and-sandal film that actually has a large cast of extras portraying soldiers and slaves alike.

   Make no mistake about it: if this movie was remade today – a highly dubious proposition to be sure – both the Roman and Celt warriors would likely be “made” of CGI imagery rather than a cast of hundreds all dressed in traditional costumes. And a lot of it would probably have been filmed on green screens rather than outside. I can’t overly recommend anyone going out of his way to see Gold for the Caesars, but I’m not going to be unduly harsh on it either.