EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS. Columbia Pictures, 1956. Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor, Donald Curtis, Morris Ankrum. Screen story by Curt Siodmak, based on the book Flying Saucers from Outer Space, by Major Donald E. Keyhoe. Director: Fred F. Sears.

   What would humanity do if UFOs waged war on Earth? Would a scientist invent a means of stopping those rascally aliens and then allow the U.S. military to utilize that technology? If you think that’s the most likely scenario, then Earth vs. the Flying Saucers will offer few surprises.

   The plot follows rocket scientist Dr. Russell A. Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his new bride Carol (Joan Taylor) as they contend with an imminent alien invasion. Complicating matters is the fact that Carol’s father, Brig. Gen. John Hanley (Morris Ankrum), has been kidnapped by the interstellar humanoids and turned into a zombie! This leads Dr. Marvin to take the lead in discovering a way of repelling the forthcoming alien invasion. Upon learning how the UFOs operate, Marvin creates a sonic weapon that proves useful to the U.S. Army as they wage war on alien vessels attempting to conquer Washington.

   If you think the plot sounds mildly intriguing – and I admit writing it made me realize how much potential the film had – you should realize that this particular science fiction movie is rather flat, both in terms of style and substance.

   Indeed, if Earth vs. the Flying Saucers has an auteur, it is most certainly special effects guru Ray Harryhausen. Responsible for the film’s stellar stop-motion animation, Harryhausen’s skill in unleashing movie magic is evident throughout what is otherwise a rather dull, plodding 1950s science fiction feature.

   Neither the direction nor the acting, save the welcome presence of character actor Morris Ankrum, is particularly memorable; in fact, much of it is truly forgettable. All of which serves to make Harryhausen’s contribution to the movie even more valuable, for without it, there’d honestly be no compelling reason to seek out this one out.

MARGARET SCHERF – The Beaded Banana. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978. No US paperback edition.

   The title sounds like that of a second-rate rock group, but it’s actually the prized possession of a member of the fly-by-night movie company that’s shooting on location in Summerfield, Montana. An undesirable Las Vegas element is moving into town as well, and some unsavory political hi-jinx foreshadow some very strange things about to happen, including murder.

   The detective is retired pathologist Dr. Grace Severance, and it’s no reflection on her to say that what we have here is a mystery full of flutsy old ladies doing their thing. The humor is of the quiet zinger type, which does a lot to mitigate all the conclusions that are so ungracefully leapt to along the way.

      The Dr. Grace Severance series —

The Banker’s Bones. Doubleday, 1968.
The Beautiful Birthday Cake. Doubleday, 1971.
To Cache a Millionaire. Doubleday, 1972.
The Beaded Banana. Doubleday, 1978.

    The Beaded Banana was Margaret Scherf’s final book. Between 1940 and 1978 she wrote a total of 24 works of detective fiction, including four in her Emily & Henry Bryce series, and seven more featuring Rev. Martin Buell. Many of her books also take place in Montana.

This British singer’s backup band on this 1971 album, her second, consisted largely of former Parliament-Funkadelic musicians.

DALLAS. Warner Brothers, 1950. Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Raymond Massey, Leif Ericson, Steve Cochran, Barbara Payton. Written by John Twist. Directed by Stuart Heisler.

WILL F. JENKINS – Dallas. Gold Medal #126, paperback original, 1950. Adaptation of the motion picture of the same title.

   Okay: for starters, I know some of you out there will be tempted to reply with a smart-ass comment about “Who shot J.R.?” I’m not naming names; you know who you are. Please remember that the TV show in question was a long time ago and you may have to explain it to the younger readers who flock to this board. Now on to the review:

   Every so often Warner Brothers decided to try doing another old-fashioned big-scale Western along the lines of their big hit from 1939, Dodge City. But somehow the spirit just wasn’t there. Where Dodge City was helmed by the talented and prestigious Michael Curtiz, they gave Dallas to the erratic Stuart Heisler. The difference is palpable: where the earlier film crackles along at a lively pace, Dallas seems to lurch awkwardly from incident to incident. Some of them are competently done, but mostly they just seem a bit tired.

   As far as the plot goes, Dallas starts out with notorious outlaw Blayde “Reb” Hollister (Gary Cooper) getting himself gunned down in the street by Wild Bill Hickok (an appropriately saturnine Red Hadley; probably the best thing in the movie) in front of the new greenhorn U.S. Marshall (Leif Erickson.)

   It’s all a put-up job of course, so that Reb can get close to Will Marlowe (Raymond Massey) a major businessman in Dallas with an unsavory reputation (not unlike Bruce Cabot in Dodge City) who murdered Reb’s family years ago in Georgia.

   Plot complications call for Reb to impersonate the Marshall, romance his fiancée (the alluring Ruth Roman) and generally muck about until a respectable running time is achieved and he gets his revenge. Raymond Massey does a solid job as the dress-heavy, but the script doesn’t give him much to do, and writer Twist throws in time-wasting complications, such as Erickson getting a pardon for Reb, then hiding it, then revealing it, Coop getting arrested and breaking jail, caught by bad guys, escaping from bad guys….. It could have been exciting, but it just ain’t.

   Warners promoted Dallas heavily, even working out a movie tie-in paperback with Gold Medal, who wisely gave it to Will F. Jenkins, who also wrote as Murray Leinster and did fine work in either persona.

   Jenkins/Leinster actually takes John Twist’s scenario and makes a better book out of it than it was a movie, starting with forty pages which ain’t even in the film, detailing how Colonel Blayde Hollister, late of the Confederate Army, was forced into outlawry to avenge the murder of his family. And when we get into the story that’s in the movie, he adds depth and complexity to the characters. The greenhorn Marshall becomes more introspective, minor townspeople acquire convincing character traits, and there’s a bit part, an outlaw’s trollop named Flo (played in the movie by the ill-fated Barbara Payton) whose resigned self-hatred suddenly becomes very real and poignant.

   Dallas the book is far from a western classic, but I found myself admiring it for what a competent pulpster could bring to a hackneyed project. I can’t recommend the movie, but the book is worth your time.

BILL S. BALLINGER – The Spy in the Java Sea. Signet D2981, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1966.

   Book five of a five book paperback spy series from the same publisher who made a lot of money printing the James Bond stories. Joaquin Hawks, son of a Nez Perce Indian father and a Spanish mother, is the leading character in each, all I believe taking place in Southeast Asia just before the war in Vietnam.

   The descriptions of the at-the-time exotic locales are done in detail and done well, but if this final tale in the series is an example, the stories are straight-forward, told without any verve I could see, and filled with cliches. In Java Sea, a malfunctioning CPU unit on a new US nuclear submarine has it stranded immobile somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, and both Moscow and Peking are close on Hawks’ trail as he hopes to find it.

   The result? Nowhere nearly as good as James Bond, and it pales completely in comparison to the Quiller spy adventure I read recently. I skimmed ahead to the end of the book to see if anything happened that I didn’t foresee happening. It didn’t, and I basically abandoned this one on page 46. In all honesty, I wasn’t a big fan of these knockoff spy novels back in the 60s, and I guess I’m still not now. You may enjoy this one more than I did.

From the original cast recording of I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road. Music by Nancy Ford with book and lyrics by Gretchen Cryer. The show premiered Off-Broadway in 1978.

   This series has been stressing the joy of collecting pulps and books, but also of great importance is surrounding yourself with like-minded friends. I cannot overstress the importance of this factor in collecting.

   The simple fact is that the great majority of the people that we come in contact with are not collectors at all and don’t really have any understanding or sympathy with our love of collecting books and pulps. They are non-collectors pure and simple, and when they see our collections, they may say that the collection is great or of interest, but usually what they are thinking is along the lines of why don’t you sell the books; why don’t you clean up this clutter; why don’t you see a therapist to address this problem of hoarding…

   Since they are non-collectors, they just about have to think these things and thus be unsympathetic to your collecting interests. So it is of great importance to have friends that collect also in order to preserve your sanity and keep enjoying your collection. And I’m not talking about just long distance friends that live far away in another city. I’m talking about friends that visit you and talk about book and pulp collecting. I’m just recovering from five days of intense interaction with such friends. The excuse for us gathering together was the Pulp Adventurecon pulp convention which was held in Bordentown NJ on November 5, 2016. This was the 17th year that this annual one-day show was held and I’ve attended all of them. Following is a summary of what happened each of the 5 days as the book collecting friends visited me in Trenton, NJ:

Wednesday, November 2 — Matt Moring of Altus Press and the owner of the rights to Popular Publications and Munsey drove down from the Boston area and spent all five days discussing future plans, pulps, original artwork, and his Altus Press pulp reprints which have now passed the 200 book mark. Several more collections in his Dime Detective Library have just been released and are available at the Altus Press website, Mike Chomko Books, and amazon.com. But the big news was about the second volume of the Race Williams BLACK MASK stories. Titled THE SNARL OF THE BEAST, it will be available at the end of November. It is a big book and looks like a black tombstone which is sort of suitable for a Carrol John Daly hard boiled book.

   While having dinner with long time friend and pulp collector Digges La Touche (hereafter referred to as The Major since he retired as a Major in the Air Force and his favorite pulp series is The Major by L. Patrick Greene) Matt showed us an amazing sight, one I never thought I’d see ever again. He is publishing three of the best pulp magazine titles, picking up the volume number where it was when the magazines ceased publication. The titles are BLACK MASK, ARGOSY, and FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES. They are slightly larger than the pulp format and each issue has a new story in addition to reprints. Plans are for later issues to also have articles and interviews. And here I thought the pulps were dead!

Thursday, November 3 — An area collector has decided to reward his long time friends by inviting them to his storage areas (he has several) and letting them take their choice of books, no charge, subject to his final approval since there are some titles he cannot bear to let go. No pulps are included but many hardback and paperback books are available. This is by invitation only and only for his good friends. Sai Shanker, who is one of the very few pulp collectors from India joined Matt and me and we carried out several boxes of books. Now that is what I mean about the importance of friends!

   We all had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together while talking about books, pulps, movies, and artwork. I can’t name the non-collectors that I’d want to eat all three meals with during the day. But the passion of collecting books is a great feeling and one you want to share with other collectors. So I ate and drank too much but it was like being at an all day party. But a party unlike the usual parties because everyone was talking about books!

Friday, November 4 — The celebration continued as I hosted a pulp luncheon for around a dozen of my book collecting friends. Fellow collectors started to arrive at 11:00 am and the only non-collector present was my wife. After a few hours of hearing us talk about books, she had to leave because non-collectors can only take so much. Books, books, books…

   Among those present were Jack Seabrook, expert on Fred Brown and the TV show ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; Jack Irwin, long time pulp collector who actually bought the magazines off the newsstands; Ed Hulse, publisher of BLOOD n THUNDER magazine; Paul Herman, art and BLACK MASK collector; Nick Certo, long time pulp dealer and art collector; Scott Hartshorn, another long time collector; and of course Matt Moring, Sai Shanker, and The Major.

   After several hours we then went to dinner at an Irish pub where we continued to talk about pulps and books. To a collector, this is like heaven, being with like minded book lovers, talking about that great subject, collecting books. Hell, we even read the things!

Saturday, November 5 — The Major picked me up at 7:30 am and by 8:00 am we were at the Bordentown convention which always is held at a Ramada Inn on route 206. The official opening time is 10:00, but dealers started to set up at 7:00 am. I had a table next to my good friends Scott Hartshorn and Mike Chomko. Sai, Matt, and The Major did not have tables but they were always nearby and ready to discuss literary subjects. Also close by with tables were Ed Hulse, Paul Herman, and Nick Certo.

   There were almost 50 dealers’ tables crammed into the room and all sorts of books and magazines were represented. Each Pulp Adventurecon gets better and better and this 17th edition was the largest yet. Well over 100 attendees and the room was busy until 4:00 when we started to pack up. I price things to sell and I sold several SF pulps which were all priced at only $5.00 each. Same with some DVDs, many still in shrink wrap. I also had nine SHADOW digests which I priced at only $10 each, maybe the bargain of the show. I sold seven of them, and then someone wanted a discount on the final two, like the 2 for $15 I guess. I told him they were priced at rock bottom and he walked away. Collectors!

   I found some bargains: 22 issues of my favorite SF fanzine, FANTASY COMMENTATOR. Price around $3.00 each. I have many of them already but at that price I might as well get them all. The same thing with SCREAM FACTORY, a great magazine which I have some copies of, but I don’t remember which ones. I bought a stack of them for $3.00 each. I also found a big bound copy of CHUMS, the British boy’s magazine. Unreadable crap of course, but the artwork was interesting and the price even more interesting at only $5.00.

   After the show closed, we all drove to the near-by Mastoris Diner, which is a famous landmark restaurant known for its large portions and baked pastry. About a dozen of us devoured as much as we could, but even then they give you so much it is difficult to finish.

   As usual I noticed I was the only one drinking. Only beer, true, but I’m a firm believer in the Mediterranean diet which consists of plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts, fish, and not much meat. Also wine and beer each day. So far it’s working for me…

Sunday, November 6 — The fifth and final day. Several of us were invited back to the free book storage area, and we met for breakfast before devouring more books. Food may finally kill your appetite but my appetite for books never ends.

   So ends five intense days of friends discussing all sorts of bookish topics. Now I have to catch up on my reading!

A SPECIAL NOTE OF THANKS to Sai Shankar for the use of the photos you see above.

ROBERT CRAIS – Lullaby Town. Elvis Cole #3. Bantam, hardcover, 1992; paperback, June 1993.

   Crais is one of those writers who irritate the hell out of me. He is an excellent prose stylist, at least to my ear; witty, glib, adept at characterization, a lot of good things. So what’s not to like? Well, in his first two Elvis Cole books, it was a pair of plots that made some of Parker’s macho excesses seem restrained. I didn’t buy this one for that reason, but waited until I came across it in the library.

   Peter Alan Nelson, wunderkind Hollywood director, dumped a wife and child early in his career, and now he wants them back. What he wants he’s in the habit of getting so he hires Elvis Cole to find them for him. Our boy is nothing if not efficient, so he finds her in short order in a small Connecticut town with a happy family life, a career, and a secret.

   The secret involves a New York mob family and the psycho son of the Godfather himself. Things get sticky quickly, so Cole calls for his Hawk-clone, Joe Pike, and you know what happens now, and who it happens to.

   The good or bad news, depending on your taste, is that nothing’s changed. Crais is still an excellent wordsmith, Cole is still wisecracking and caring, Pike is still deadly as a wino’s wake-up breath, and the bad guys are still really nasty. And once again our boys defy reality and take on the mob and win.

   Of all the imitators that Parker has spawned, Crais is probably the most like him; except that he doesn’t even pay hip service to reality. He still pisses me off, and if I read his next, Free Fall, it’ll also be from the library. But if you like the kind of book he writes, nobody but Parker does it better.

Bibliographic Note:   There are now 11 Elvis Cole books, and as of next year (2017), six Elvis Cole – Joe Pike pair-ups, the latter apparently having been promoted in terms of billing.

 A. S. FLEISCHMAN – Counterspy Express. Stark House Press, trade paperback, December 2016; two-in-one edition with Shanghai Flame. Introduction by George Kelley. First appeared as Ace Double D-57, paperback original; 1st printing, 1954. Published back-to-back with Treachery in Trieste, by Charles L. Leonard. Film: Allied Artists, 1958, as Spy in the Sky!.

   One small complaint I have about this book is that so little of it takes place on a train, as the title would suggest — only the last ten or eleven pages of the forthcoming Stark House edition. But who really cares when those ten pages are filled with as much action, thrills and as many revelations as they are in this book?

   Or that all of the rest of the book, relating the adventures of American agent Victor Welles, alias Jim Cabot, as he tries to locate a Russian scientist who’s trying to defect from behind the Iron Curtain with some highly advanced formulas, is as cram-packed with chases, near escapes and double-dealing all across Europe as this one is?

   It’s hard not to enjoy a book for which you have the sense that the author had as much fun writing it as you are in reading it. Don’t expect great literature. Books like this one come straight from the days of the pulps, complete with femme fatales who do their best, deliberately or not, to distract Cabot from the task he has on hand — and nearly succeed.

   Cabot tells the story in first person, so it’s not easy to get a firm picture in mind as to what he looks like, but at length I settled on Robert Ryan. Night club singer and dancer Pia Brindisi could have been modeled on Gina Lollobrigida, and Cabot’s primary adversary Sydney Jardine sounded to me exactly like Sidney Greenstreet — far better choices on my part, I believe, than the ones who played the roles in the film that was actually made, to wit: Steve Brodie, Sandra Francis and Bob De Lange, respectively.