THE CYCLE SAVAGES. Trans American Films, 1969. Bruce Dern, Melody Patterson, Chris Robinson, Maray Ayres, Karen Ciral, Mike Mehas. Written and directed by Bill Brame.

   Bruce Dern is at his unhinged, psychologically disturbed best in The Cycle Savages, a mediocre biker movie with a threadbare plot. Filmed on location in the Silver Lake and Echo Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles, the movie is a rather downbeat affair. Dern’s portrayal of Keeg, the leader of a biker gang engaged in the white slavery racket, is so viscerally raw and cruel, that one forgets that one is even watching a fine actor at work.

   But it takes more than a dastardly villain to make a movie work. It also takes a hero. In Cycle Savages, we really don’t get much. The only person in the neighborhood who seems willing to stand up to Keeg is Romko (Chris Robinson), a pensive, sensitive artist originally from the Eastern Bloc. Unfortunately, Robinson’s portrayal of Romko doesn’t exactly leave one feeling inspired. At least he has a pretty girl at his side. Lea (Melody Patterson) is playing both ends against the middle. She’s working for Keeg, but also falling in love with Romko. If this doesn’t seem to entice you, then I’d suggest that you’re not going to find much in the plot to keep you interested.

   What makes this film somewhat worth a look – aside from Dern’s over the top madman portrayal – is the fact that it’s very much a slice of life from a specific place at a specific time. One imagines that the filmmakers had some sense of the sleazy biker counterculture that existed in late 1960s Los Angeles and how a biker gang could really ruin a neighborhood. There is actually a great deal of meanness on display here, including an implied gang rape scene that would be difficult to put on screen today.

   But is there a message in the movie? Or is it just sheer exploitation? If it’s the latter, the movie could have benefited from some more memorable characters and better music. One can thoroughly appreciate Dern as an actor, but a movie needs more than a vindictive, misogynistic villain to make it worth the price of admission. Caveat emptor.

DENISE SWANSON – Murder of a Sleeping Beauty. Signet, paperback original; April 2002.

   As far as the recent crop of cozy mysteries goes (since the turn of the century) this may be one of the better written ones. Since Sleeping Beauty is the third of now nineteen in the series of crime-solving adventures of school psychologist Skye Denison, it is certainly among the ones that have run the longest.

   It does not hurt that Denison has a “real” job, not an extension of a hobby turned into a something hopefully more. It also does not hurt that Swanson can write, with plenty of witty asides about the life of a school psychologist, especially in regard to superiors as well as the students themselves — she was one for seventeen years.

   Dead in this book is one of Scumble River’s most popular seniors, a girl who was a cheerleader, had the leading role in the school’s upcoming play, and was the winner of many past beauty pageants. As expected, Swanson does not think well of the latter, especially the mothers who constantly push their children too fast and too far.

   The message is more important than the mystery, or so it seemed to me, but I am not among the target audience for books such as this, nor, I suspect are most regular readers of this blog, who probably are ill-equipped to handle mysteries in which the leading sleuth has had romantic relationships, mostly ill-fated, with the chief of police, the city coroner, and the new teacher on the staff.

   Pluses and minuses, therefore. You’ll just have to figure out which apply to you.

K. C. CONSTANTINE – Bottom Liner Blues. Mario Balzic #10. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1993; paperback, 1994.

   This is the first Balzic book from Constantine in three years. He doesn’t churn them out; the first in the series appeared in 1972. He has achieved an enviable reputation not only as a mystery writer, but a writer of regional fiction.

   Mario Balzic is the 64 year-old Chief of Police in Rocksburg, Pennsylvania, a thoroughly depressed and depressing area of the state devastated by the collapse of the coal mining and steel industries. He’s feeling his age. His mother died not too long ago, and this triggered an ongoing reevaluation by his wife of their marriage and her life; he’s having minor problems with a City Father, and the area is undergoing a record drought and heat wave.

   As the book opens, he is confronted with two problems. First, he’s called to the boondocks to talk to a woman with a small child, who spins a disjointed tale of a husband who is threatening to kill the man married to his ex-wife for abusing his children. The woman won’t reveal her name or her husband’s, but does give Balzic the name of the alleged abuser.

   Second, a Russian-American writer he knows slightly is causing problems in his favorite bar, ranting and raving and running the customers off. From these two things the rest of the book flows, and the larger part from the latter.

   This may be good regional fiction; I don’t think so, but it may be. It isn’t a good crime novel. More than anything else it is a sustained diatribe, by the Russian, by Balzic’s wife Ruth, by Balzic himself. Page after page after page consists of pure dialogue or monolog deploring everything from the economy, to a woman’s role in life and marriage, to the unfair way America treats its writers, to life in general. It is a sustained cry from the hearts of several unhappy people, some of them desperately so. One wonders about Constantine himself.

   As always in Constantine’s books, the characterization is sharp and in depth, and his ear for regional dialect is superb. There is no real plot, no real sense of resolution; this is slice of life stuff. Narration is minimal — if the speeches were removed, I doubt the book would be fifty pages long. Bottom Liner Blues may be a good, even a fine, book; that, of course, is as always a matter of subjective evaluation. What it isn’t is a murder mystery, a detective story, or even a crime novel. What it is in my opinion is an exercise in self-indulgence.

Bibliographic Note:   There are 17 books in this series, appearing between 1972 and 2002.

INNOCENT BYSTANDERS. Stanley Baker, Geraldine Chaplin, Donald Pleasence, Dana Andrews, Sue Lloyd. Screenwriter: James Mitchell, based on his own book, published as by James Munro. Director: Peter Collinson.

   Somewhere, deep in the heart of Innocent Bystanders, there’s a pretty darn good story about international espionage ready to be told. But I’d be kidding you if I told you that the Stanley Baker vehicle, such as it is, resembles anything that could even be remotely considered cohesive, gripping spy movie.

   Clumsily directed and sloppily edited, the film lumbers from dramatic scene to fight scene, all the while giving the viewer very little reason to care about how it’s all going to turn out. That is, until the last thirty minutes or so, when one begins to get the impression that the movie is going to turn into a trenchant look at Great Power politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict. But, alas, it’s not to be.

   Baker portrays aging British master spy/assassin John Craig, a secret agent whose glory days may well be past. His conniving boss, Loomis (Donald Pleasence) gives him one last chance to prove his mettle. He tasks Craig with finding Kaplan, a Russian Jewish agronomist who escaped a Soviet prison. Apparently, Kaplan has developed a scientific technique that will allow the desert to bloom. So it’s not surprising that the CIA is also interesting in finding him.

   Most of the movie’s running time is devoted to following Craig and his newfound female companion, Miriam Loman (Geraldine Chaplin) who may or may not be an American or Israeli spy, as they travel from New York to Turkey in search of the enigmatic Kaplan. It doesn’t take long for Loman to fall in love with Craig, something I’ll never fully understand. He has neither the charm nor the wit of James Bond and is something of a bore. Still, the plot needed something to keep the viewer somewhat entertained, at least until they are able to locate Kaplan.

   As it turns out, Kaplan has an even bigger problem that the American and British intelligence agencies on his trail. He’s somehow ticked off a secretive group of Russian Jewish dissidents who are now working for the KGB. Or something. It all devolves into nonsense, making this movie a truly oddball feature. It’s one of those movies adapted from a book that probably could have worked, had the script been more coherent and did more to explain the motivations of its myriad characters. But it didn’t.

RICHARD M. BAKER – Death Stops the Bells. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1938.

   This is the third and final case tackled and solved by a middle-aged scholar by the name of Franklin Russell in book form. The earlier entries in the series were Death Stops the Manuscript (Scribners, 1936) and Death Stops the Rehearsal (Scribners, 1937). Russell is by profession a schoolmaster in a small town in Massachusetts, but his true calling is as an amateur detective, and in Death Stops the Bells, he really has his work cut out for him.

   He is on hand for the first death. It takes place in a compound of two homes and two families whose members respectively hate each other. To be correct in that statement, the elder members of each family do. The younger members of both sexes find the opportunity to meet and consort on many an occasion, to the consternation of their respective parents. A third home in the block is owned by a friend of Mr. Russell, who happens to be on hand when whoever is playing the bells in a church tower on the estate stops suddenly, mid-song, then starts playing again, the entire song through.

   To Russell’s fine-tuned ear, however, it is clearly a second player ringing the bells. It is soon discovered that the first player is dead, murdered, it is assumed when the first song stopped. Was it the murderer who started ringing the bells again? And if so, why?

   The writing is old-fashioned and stilted, not at all how you would think a book written in 1938 would sound. The number of suspects is also very limited, which makes the questioning quite tedious, as it goes over the same topics again and again. Even Detective-Sergeant McCoun seems to squirm a lot in his seat as he listens to Mr. Russell interrogate all of the suspects in turn, and then as further events occur, start all over again.

   In other words, a lot of talk is all there is to propel the story forward, and not a lot of action. None, in fact. The solution, when it comes, is, unfortunately, little more than yawn-producing. A mediocre effort, in other words. If Scribners, publishers of the S. S. Van Dine mysteries, were thinking they had another Philo Vance on their hands, they were sadly mistaken.

EDITH HOWIE – Murder for Christmas. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1941. No paperback edition.

   An alleged short cut during a blizzard in New York leads Marcia and Peter Holgate, the latter a private detective, to the house of Carter Dravis on Christmas Eve. Dravis is a collector — of wives — and has naturally gathered around him for the holiday family members and acquaintances who bode him no good. At least he’s sensible enough to be scared, but he isn’t scared long because someone inserts a knife in his back.

   Although Howie writes well, she unfortunately not only employs “Had I But Known” but “Had I But Given It Any Thought.” Marcia Holgate, the novel’s narrator, is a blurter, only bothering to think after she has said something dangerous either for herself or for someone else. Concealed evidence, for reasons that perplex me, and a blind eye by Peter Holgate allow the murderer a chance at Marcia, who carries an automatic she calls a revolver and who has never been shown what to do with the safety.

Editorial Comment:   My review of Edith Howie’s first book, Murder for Tea, can be found here. Following the review is a complete list of all of the author’s mystery fiction, seven titles in all. For more about the author and another review of Murder for Christmas, her second book, check out what Curt Evans has to say over on his blog.

STEVE FRAZEE – Desert Guns. Dell 1st Edition A135, paperback original, April 1957. Thorndike Press, hardcover, 1998.

GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS. Warner Brothers, 1961. Clint Walker, Roger Moore, Letícia Román, Robert Middleton, Chill Wills, Gene Evans. Screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Leonard Freeman, based on the novel Desert Guns by Steve Frazee. Director: Gordon Douglas.

   Steve Frazee is, perhaps, the most underappreciated Western writer to come out of the late pulp era and practice his considerable skills in hardcover and paperback. He had an early success with his novel Many Rivers to Cross, a rollicking story of the taming of a mountain man that became a MGM film with Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker, and Hollywood would call on him more than once, but he never seemed to achieve the place he should have among writers like Louis L’Amour, Will Henry, Elmer Kelton, and the like.

   This despite the fact he also wrote non-Westerns like Sky Block (something of a minor collector’s item), Running Target, and High Cage (these last two both films, the latter as High Hell, with John Derek). He also wrote Whitman big books featuring the likes of Cheyenne, Maverick, and Zorro, often illustrated by renown comic book artist Alex Toth, and thus doubly collectable.

   Desert Guns opens in 1853 with its heroes, young Jim Rainbolt and his mentor and friend Shaun Weymouth, already on the run along the Sangre de Cristos in New Mexico from the hideously disfigured but canny Green River and his constant companion, the sadistic brute Frank McCracken, both of whom are after the Spanish gold the two have found, and plunging us directly into the action at hand.

   Frazee is particularly adept here at capturing the otherworldly feel of the high desert and the haunted atmosphere of the Sangre de Cristos. I’ve spent a good deal of time there over the years, briefly living in Los Alamos, and I can attest to the “weird, whining sort of sound, low and mighty,” that you can hear in a hollow and the sand on “the steep sides of the hollow (that) was running like fine brown snow” the sand playing it’s “unearthly music.”

   In short order Rainbolt and Shaun encounter the Hudsons, father and daughter Gail building a life on a small ranchero, Hudson an arrogant Virginian with little hospitality and less time for a couple of ‘field hands.’”

   With scant help from the arrogant Hudson, the two decide to bury the gold and seek help from Diamasio Gondora the “one man on the Hueferano you can trust.” It’s there they meet the boy Chico, and Gondora’s half Indian daughter Paisano. By now you should be able to smell the triangle that develops between the blonde civilized Gail, the wild half Indian Paisano, and Rainbolt, a further complication to everything.

   The basics of the plot are simple: gold makes men mad and greedy and there are more important things. Along the way there is graphic violence, torture, mayhem,treachery, and redemption. Rainbolt grows from youngster to man and Shaun achieves a sort of mythic status as the ideal man of the West, the last of a breed, more worried that the gold will change his wanderer’s life than about losing it.

   The shifting treacherous sands play a central role both in the plot and thematically. They represent not only shifting loyalties and fortunes, but also inconstant nature, that takes no sides, but sometimes favors one and not the other, and sometimes favors no one.

   Desert Guns is no Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but it is an entertaining Western, superbly written, and with more to offer than the simple story it tells. It is Frazee at his best, which is very good indeed, involving you in the fortunes and fate of Rainbolt and Shaun at a much deeper level than most Westerns.

   The film, Gold of the Seven Saints, changes many of the elements of the book, Clint Walker is Rainbolt, but the older and more seasoned of the two, while Roger Moore as Shawn Garrett is an Irishman. Still, it has a fine script co-written by Leigh Brackett, solid direction by Gordon Douglas, and though it is unaccountably a black and white film, location settings capture much of the feel of the book, and fine character actors people it playing to the broader elements with some zest, despite the fact it often seems like an extended episode of a Warner Brothers fifties television Western with so many familiar faces from the small screen.

   I happen to like it much more than many others do, but whatever its virtues it doesn’t rise to the standard of the Frazee novel it is based on. But don’t let that stop you from seeking out Desert Guns. I found a hardcover copy on Amazon for $4, so it isn’t impossible to find.

SHAKES THE CLOWN. IRS Media, 1991. Bobcat Goldthwait, Julie Brown, Blake Clark, Paul Dooley, Kathy Griffin, Florence Henderson, Tom Kenny, Adam Sandler, Scott Herriott, LaWanda Page, Jack Gallagher, Robin Williams. Written & directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.

   I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found Bobcat Goldthwait kind of easy to resist. He’s in the same funny-irritating mould as Sam Kinison and Gilbert Gottfried, only not as funny. Or as likable, for that matter. So I was much surprised to find myself enjoying this pleasantly off-kilter comedy-mystery.

   Goldthwait plays Shakes, an alcoholic Party Clown whose progress of steady decay is suddenly interrupted when he’s framed for murdering his boss and must rally his feeble wits and willpower to avenge his old friend and save his own grease-painted hide.

   Okay, nothing much too new here so far, It’s just the old down-on-his-luck PI story fitted out with big shoes and a shiny red nose. But Goldthwaite adds a soupcon of eccentricity to the proceedings, and — somehow — keeps it deftly balanced just below the surface for the entire film. It starts almost imperceptibly, with lines like: “You know, when we first built this place, there were no Clowns in this neighborhood.”

   Then after Shakes has barely survived a kiddie party, he makes his way to his favorite bar, The Twisted Balloon, where Clowns — in full makeup — sit around drinking, swearing, and talking about getting laid.

   A Villain Clown is introduced (I don’t know who plays him, but he makes Jack Nicholson look like Pinky Lee) with a couple of Rodeo Clowns for Hired Muscle. Clearly now, we are in someplace not quite where we thought we were.

   And so it goes as the story slowly orbits around the edges of the Planet. The Cops all dress like 40s Detectives and talk about Health Food. Clowns drive around in gaudy cars and harass mimes, whom they view somewhat like Blacks view Koreans. Very gradually, the film develops an understated loopiness all its own like a toned-down take on Roger Rabbit. It even has Guest Stars: Robin Williams turns up as a loquacious mime, and I’d swear (it’s hard to tell behind all that makeup) Tom Hanks plays one of the Baddie’s minions!

   Whatever the case, Shakes the Clown emerges as a surprisingly inventive and intelligent piece of film-making, and not a bad Caper Movie either. Catch it.

GAVIN BLACK – A Time for Pirates. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1971. No US paperback edition. First published in the UK by Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1971.

   There is a riot in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — young Malays demonstrating against the Chinese merchants — and Paul Harris is caught in the middle of it. His car is destroyed and he makes his escape on foot, in the process rescuing another stranded European, the young blond wife of a geologist. This geologist, as it turns out, works for an unscrupulous Chinese corporation that Harris suspects of secret oil exploration.

   Harris loves Malaysia, is concerned about the environment and all that, but figures someone is going to develop the oil, so he might as well have a hand in it. With backing from a Japanese firm, he sets about forming a company to beat out the Chinese.

   So begins a very readable and rather involved story of conflicting business and political interests, with money, power, and terrorism used to back the various interests. (Harris himself is subjected to a couple of physical attacks and attempted kidnappings, plus an attempt on his life.) The blonde? Well, she becomes an enigmatic figure, usually appearing whenever a kidnapping is in the offing. This is also a story of races — Malays, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and Europeans — coming together, seldom in harmony.

   Gavin Black (a pseudonym of Oswald Wynd) was born in the Orient and most of his novels take place in the Far East — Malaysia and Singapore in particular. Other books featuring Paul Harris include Suddenly, at Singapore (1961), A Wind of Death (1967), and The Golden Cockatrice (1975).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

DOCTOR BLOOD’S COFFIN. United Artists, UK/US, 1961. Kieron Moore, Hazel Court, Ian Hunter, Kenneth J. Warren, Gerald Lawson. Ditector: Sidney J. Furie.

   Kieron Moore comes off more as unhinged than diabolical at the eponymous Dr. Blood in Doctor Blood’s Coffin, a modern Gothic thriller with just enough atmosphere and suspense to keep the viewer engaged throughout. Directed by the prolific Canadian director, Sidney J. Furie, this British horror film benefits tremendously from a score composed by Buxton Orr, who also is credited with the soundtrack for the underappreciated science fiction thriller, First Man Into Space (1959) that I reviewed here.

   Set in early 1960s Cornwall, the film borrows heavily from themes Mary Shelley introduced into modern horror literature. Dr. Blood, who returns to his small Cornish village, is a stifled genius. At least that’s how he sees himself. Feeling as if only he could test his theory on living patients, he would be able to break all frontiers in medical knowledge and be able to bring the dead back to life!

   It doesn’t take a scientific genius to know where Dr. Blood’s unholy schemes are headed. Indeed, as the movie progresses, Dr. Blood amps up his narcissism as the concomitant body count rises. The only people who are able to keep him somewhat steady are his father, a local physician (Ian Hunter) and Linda Parker (Hazel Court), the nurse in his father’s employ. She’s a lonely widow who takes a shine toward the younger Dr. Blood. Soon enough, she’s come to suspect that her newfound love isn’t being exactly honest with her.

   Even though at times the movie progresses as a somewhat languid pace, Dr. Blood’s Coffin is best appreciated as a slow boiler. It takes a while to warm up, but once it’s done, Dr. Blood emerges as a truly memorable villain, one whose story is as much a tragic as it is a warning against tampering with Nature. Although there’s no breakout star performance – Moore is a fine actor, but he’s no Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee – the movie has solid acting throughout and would be likely appreciated by fans of Hammer’s crime and horror films.