CHINA GIRL. 20th Century Fox, 1942. Gene Tierney, George Montgomery, Lynn Bari, Victor McLaglen, Sig Ruman, Robert Blake, Philip Ahn. Screenwriter: Ben Hecht; director: Howard Hathaway.

   Many reviewers do not appear to know what to make of this film, and without a sense of perspective — and history — I’d have to agree that it doesn’t fit into any kind of standard category I can think of either, not satisfactorily, at least.

   Eighty percent of the film would have constituted a well above average B-movie adventure thriller, but the scenes at the beginning, with the Japanese army shooting Chinese peasants lined up along (and falling into) a long earthen burial pit belie any sense of light amusement value right from the start.

   Nor is the ending, with Japanese warplanes wiping out an entire Chinese village, filled with screaming people, many of them children, intended to have anyone whistling their way out of theater. No, what this is is a bitterly honest anti-Japanese wartime propaganda film disguised as an everyday spy story and romance, with a budget and production values a notch higher than would have been given to it if that was all it was intended to be.

   George Montgomery plays an ace newsreel cameraman, Johnny ‘Bugsy’ Williams, who’s assisted in escaping from a Japanese detention center by Lynn Bari and Victor McLaglen, who have their own irons in the fire. Gene Tierney is Haoli Young, the half-Chinese girl whose life is interrupted by Williams, not smoothly at first, but her self-applied veneer of protection is first cracked, then weakened, and finally disappears.

   Comic relief is provided by Robert Blake as a young Mandalay street urchin who attaches himself to Williams. Haoli�s father is played by Philip Ahn, a teacher whose classroom demeanor was exactly the same in 1942 as it was 30 years later as the mentor to David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in the TV series Kung Fu.

   George Montgomery plays earnest very well, once his sharp edges have been worn away, while Gene Tierney is both beautiful and exotic as well as totally natural. No surprise there. Lynn Bari seems to have caught the eyes of some reviewers, but for me, not this time around.

   As for the movie as a whole, it is as I’ve suggested, a mishmash of this and that, a movie made by design and good intentions, but when the design is no longer needed, then neither are the intentions.

   And you can take the following to the bank, too. When any movie takes place in western Asia in November 1941, and one of the characters comes across a secret codebook containing the number 7 and the deciphered word “pearl,” you will know that you now know more than any of the characters know, except for the bad guys, and you will know exactly who they are.

   Not that you exactly need a scorecard.

CHARLES MERRILL SMITH – Reverend Randollph and the Fall from Grace, Inc.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1978. Paperback reprint: Avon, 1982.

   This third mystery adventure of C. P. Randollph, a one-time pro quarterback now turned minister, continues to learn the ins and outs of his new profession, and in this case more specifically, how he finds that a clergyman’s responsibilities entail more than just his presence at Sunday morning services.

   In addition, there are often affairs of a political nature to contend with, both within the church and out. In this case, as an extreme example, being murdered are the close associates of a television evangelist who hopes to join Randollph’s denomination before announcing his bid for the U. S. Senate.

   Without a doubt, organized religion can always use such engagingly down-to-earth men of the cloth as Reverend Randollph. Reporting fairly on the mystery, however, I reluctantly have to admit that the motive for murder is an unlikely one.

[UPDATE] 12-24-08.  The Reverend Randollph books, concerned with everyday church life as they were, remain among my favorite mysteries in which clergymen do double-up duty as sleuths and detectives.

   Charles Merrill Smith wrote five of them before a relatively early death, with a sixth almost finished at the time of his passing. The book was completed by his son Terrance Lore Smith, also a mystery novelist. Phil Grosset, on his webpage for the character, says that Terrance intended to continue the Reverend Randollph stories on his own, but two years later he was killed himself in an automobile accident.

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all six Reverend Randollph mysteries:

SMITH, CHARLES MERRILL. 1918-1985.
      Reverend Randollph and the Wages of Sin. Putnam, 1974.

      Reverend Randollph and the Avenging Angel. Putnam 1977.
      Reverend Randollph and the Fall from Grace, Inc. Putnam, 1978.
      Reverend Randollph and the Holy Terror. Putnam, 1980.
      Reverend Randollph and the Unholy Bible. Putnam, 1983.

      Reverend Randollph and the Splendid Samaritan (completed by the author’s son, Terrance Lore Smith). Putnam, 1986.

C. W. SCOTT-GILES – The Wimsey Family: A Fragmentary History Compiled from Correspondence with Dorothy Sayers.

Victor Gollancz Ltd, UK, hardcover, 1977; New English Library, pb, 1979. Harper & Row, US, hc, 1978; Avon, pb, October 1979.

   As a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers I would desperately like to recommend The Wimsey Family, by C. W. Scott-Giles. I have long been on record as saying there should be more of the Baker Street Irregular type of speculative writing about other detectives than Sherlock Holmes.

   Based on correspondence with Sayers, Scott-Giles has provided a genealogical history of Lord Peter Wimsey. However, most of it concerns pre-1700 history and does not directly Concern the characters Sayers created. It may be of interest to students of arms and heraldry, but it is not especially vital to mystery fans. It certainly provides no answers to such vital questions as: what really occurred between Lord Peter and the German soprano in Vienna?

   This is also an over-priced book. Refuting the conventional laws of supply and demand, the [US hardcover] publisher has apparently assumed that since there will be a small audience, a high price is needed to maximize profit (or minimize loss). Six dollars and ninety-five cents is a bit much, even in these inflated times, for an 88 page book with a handful of drawings and not even a family tree diagram, something essential to an enterprise of this sort.

   Mr. Scott-Giles, due to his obvious love of the Wimsey canon, would appear to have been well-qualified to do the definitive “biography” of Lord Peter. It is unfortunate that he did not give himself a wider canvas.

[UPDATE] 12-24-08.   Geoff Bradley just emailed me (this is Steve) to point out that the Dorothy L. Sayers Society has recently published a new edition of this book. The price, including postage to the US, $38. (Don’t anyone tell Marv.)

   For more details, email me or Geoff (at Geoffcads @ aol.com), or even better if you’re a subscriber to CADS, the mystery zine that Geoff publishes, see page 14 of #55, the most recent issue.

   Highlights of #55 include a long article by Agatha Christie written in 1945 in which she discusses the work of her contemporary mystery writers; Josef Hoffmann on Mildred Davis; Jon L. Breen on Charlie Chan; and more. I’ve only begun to scratch the surface.

   To obtain a copy and/or to start a subscription, contact Geoff (address above). Highly recommended!

KATHRYN LASKY KNIGHT – Mortal Words.

Pocket, reprint paperback; 1st printing, July 1991. Hardcover edition: Summit Books, 1990.

   It’s a comfort then [after reading and reviewing Ben Sloane’s Hot Zone] to return to the real world, where deaths still occur, but when they do, they’re seriously mourned. The real world, unfortunately, is filled with violence, there’s no denying that, but it’s nice to be able to feel that you’re not the only one who feels that violence is the problem, and very seldom is it the solution.

   On the top of the front cover, even before the title, is the heading: “Calista Jacobs is back!” Unfortunately, this is the first I knew about Trace Elements, which was Callista’s first mystery-adventure, along with her precocious son Charley, who is now 13, so I never knew she was away.

   Luckily (in a matter of speaking) enough references to the earlier book are made that I may not even have to go out looking for it. In terms of updating her life, in Mortal Words Calista is now a widow. She is also a world-famous illustrator of children’s books, and she and Charley live in that hotbed of liberalism, Cambridge, Mass.

   This is definitely not a book for readers of a more conservative persuasion. The book opens with Calista and her friends being harassed by a fervent right-wing fundamentalist at a librarian’s literary conference, and the plot grows to include born-again evangelists, evolutionary racists, and Nazi-inspired sperm banks. Moral cripples all, according to Ms. Knight, but nonetheless they embody a powerful anti-science movement, and quite the nasty combination indeed.

   Naturally Calista is opposed to all this with every fiber of her being, and equally naturally it makes her an obvious target. Murder also occurs, but with Charley’s computer-hacking abilities and general intellectual curiosity, along with Calista’s growing friendship with Archie Baldwin, noted archaeologist, the villains stand very little chance.

   As you may have gathered, here is a mystery that is bursting the seams of plain old (and old-fashioned) detective fiction, and in my opinion, it certainly wouldn’t hurt anybody to read it. As a detective story, though, I think it’s seriously flawed by the total lack of attention the Boston police force pay to the murder and to the invaders of Calista’s home.

   They are so severely excluded from the story, as a matter of fact, that you begin to wonder if they could possibly be in on the plot. I hope I’m not saying too much without a [WARNING: Plot Alert] that they are not, but it certainly makes the rest of the story a little harder to swallow.

   This same lack of concern on the part of Calista and Archie as to their safety, and that of Charley, is just as hard to accept. If murder and the invasion of one’s home isn’t warning enough that their opponents are serious, what is?

[UPDATE] 12-23-08.   The author wrote only four books in the series. As Kathryn Lasky, she’s been much prolific as a writer of children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction, for which she’s been given a list of awards as long as your arm. Expanded from her entry the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here are her four mysteries, all with Calista Jacobs:

KNIGHT, KATHRYN LASKY. 1944- .
      Trace Elements. Norton, hc, 1986. Pocket, pb, 1987.

      Mortal Words. Summit, 1990. Pocket, pb, 1991.
      Mumbo Jumbo. Summit 1991. Pocket, pb, 1992.
      Dark Swan. St. Martin’s, 1994. Worldwide, pb, 1996.

RIDE LONESOME. Columbia Pictures, 1959. Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James Best, Lee Van Cleef, James Coburn. Screenwriter: Burt Kennedy; director: Budd Boetticher.

   When I was but a lad, Randolph Scott’s westerns were among my favorites, but I always wondered why he always played somebody different every time one of his movies came to town.

   Roy was always Roy, Gene was always Gene, and Durango was always Durango (but his alter ego Steve always seemed to have a different last name, a sneaky fact I never realized until IMDB came along).

   Having a cowboy star named Steve was all I needed, nothing more.

   I never saw Randolph Scott’s later westerns, though. By the time the late 50s came along, I was interested in other things, and it’s only recently that I’ve discovered that the later ones are considered to be among his best.

   I suspect that many of you are way ahead of me on this.

   In Ride Lonesome, for example, he plays a lean and somewhat mean bounty hunter named Ben Brigade. His prisoner is a young outlaw (and killer) named Billy John, played to callow perfection by James Best. Also on Billy John’s trail, but arriving too late are a couple of other outlaws (Pernell Roberts, in his pre-Bonanza days, and James Coburn, whose film debut this movie was).

   The reward money is not what motivates these last two. It’s the amnesty that the governor of the state has promised to anyone who brings Billy John in. Reluctantly they team up with Brigade, though, to make a stand against of a marauding band of Indians who have already killed Carrie Lane’s husband, manager of a stage stop in almost the middle of nowhere.

   That makes five of them who, once the Indian threat has passed, must also reckon with the fact that Billy John’s brother (Lee Van Cleef) is not going to take lightly the prospect of his hanging. As Ben Brigade, Scott is laconic to the point of barely moving his lips, his aging features chiseled as if out of well-weathered stone.

   A couple of segments of dialogue will illustrate, courtesy of IMDB to get them correct, but they’re the same ones that caught my ear as I was watching:

Mrs. Carrie Lane: You don’t seem like the kind that would hunt a man for money.
Ben Brigade: I am.

   I see that I have not yet mentioned Karen Steele, the young and impossibly blonde actress who plays Mrs. Lane, and she of the statuesque figure with measurements that even Barbie could envy. (Most of Karen Steele’s career seems to have been on television; this is one of only a very few movies she made. I truly regret not having a color closeup photo to show you.)

   Not surprisingly, Brigade’s temporary allies eye her with lust in their eyes as well as their heart, and even Brigade himself seems to be susceptible to her charms, once or twice. But Billy John is not Brigade’s only mission, and as the title suggests, it’s a lonesome one.

   In the list of my all time favorite western movies, I’m thinking it over, but I’m not yet sure that this one’s on it, or that it should be. Other reviewers have praised it highly, but at just over 70 minutes long, the story’s not quite deep enough for me to be convinced. But what it is is extremely good. The color photography is terrific, and all of the actors involved do top notch jobs.

   I don’t know why I’m resisting. But as I was watching, the story didn’t quite feel real enough, a little stagey perhaps, or maybe a little too pat for its own good. But as I’m writing this, I’ll tell you what. The movie’s calling me to watch it again, and there’s no way I won’t.

   Not only that, but I have a feeling that when I do, it’s going to move up a few notches in my own but totally objective personal ranking.

BEN SLOANE – Hot Zone.

Gold Eagle; paperback original. First printing, March 1990.

   As they would say in the world of comic fandom, this is Max Horn’s origin as a superhero. What he is is a cop in 21st century New York who, after getting augmented parts (a la the Six Million Dollar Man), goes out to wreck havoc (and revenge) in a city so decayed and dying it looks as though Mad Max had been living there for years.

   Since the book takes place that far in the future, he even goes out into space, and most of the action takes place on a mining asteroid called New Pittsburgh. I’ve seen only bits and pieces of the movie Total Recall, but on the basis of the little I’ve seen, I think they could use the same background sets in making a film of Hot Zone. (To give Mr. Sloane (a pen name) some credit, maybe the book came first. (Or did Robocop?))

   There are some moments of rather sardonic humor in Hot Zone, but mostly what this book is about is violence and killing and body parts scattered all over the place (as in all of the other action/adventure books that Gold Eagle publishes).

   If you are not up to it, this is 300 pages of sludge. Books like this do sell, however, and they are direct descendants of certain superhero pulps of the 30s and 40s. If you enjoy those, I think you might like this book, too.

   I didn’t much care for it, though. What I find objectionable in stories of this sort is the underlying contempt there seems to be for human life. The descriptive scenes are well done (those not involving murder and mayhem), and I can’t deny that there’s plenty of raw power in the telling.

   But the dialogue is exceedingly poor (“holy shit” being the most common phrase some of the characters can manage to come up with), and there’s just no getting around it, plain and simple, this is a terribly grim view of life.

   Let’s put it this way. I felt as though I needed to take a shower when I was done. I probably don’t know you well enough to be able to say for sure, but you may feel that way too.

[UPDATE] 12-22-08.   When I say “greatly revised” I don’t mean to suggest that I changed any of the essence of the review. A lead-in paragraph was deleted, I changed the order of some of the original phrasing, and I rewrote the last line. (I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of my opinion as it wrote it then, as opposed to now.)

   Since I brought it up, I thought I’d do some investigating. Mad Max came out in 1979; Robocop in 1987; and Total Recall premiered in June 1990. This makes the latter too late to be a source, but not the other two.

   As for Ben Sloan and the “Max Horn” series, there were only four. Perhaps books like these stopped selling, or perhaps the general consensus of the intended reading public ran along the same lines as mine. In the spirit of full disclosure, though, here are the titles, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   From which I have also learned the true name of the author; Mr. Hubin lists no other titles to his credit.

SLOANE, BEN. Pseudonym of Stephen R. Cox.
      Hot Zone. Gold Eagle, pbo, 1990.
      Blown Dead. Gold Eagle, pbo, 1990.
      Outland Strip. Gold Eagle, pbo, 1991.
      Ultimate Weapon. Gold Eagle, pbo, 1991.

RIVER OF NO RETURN. 20th Century Fox. Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe, Rory Calhoun, Tommy Rettig. Director: Otto Preminger.

   I’ve listed only four cast members, but the opening scenes take place at a tent city swarming with prospectors, would-be prospectors, and those who prey on them, not to mention dance-hall girls and other members of the fairer sex, some innocent, others not so, and for almost all of time, their parts are so small I didn’t bother listing their names. (You can find them at IMDB if you’re so interested.)

   All we really see for the longest part of three-fourths of the film are (in remarkably the same proportion) only three of the four above.

   There are some Indians, though, and they’re howling down the trail of Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum), who’s trying to make a life for himself as a farmer; his nine-year-old son Mark (Tommy Rettig of Lassie fame); and Kay Weston (Marilyn Monroe), one of those previously mentioned dance-hall girls, complete with sequins, black net stockings, and a guitar.

   Forced onto a raft to make their escape, the trip downriver is hard and torturous. They’re without a horse or a rifle, both stolen by Kay’s no-good husband Harry, one of those previous mentioned gamblers. (This is where the perfectly cast Rory Calhoun comes in.) As a parenthetical remark, I believe that Kay says toward the end of the movie that they aren’t married yet, but once Harry files his claim on a gold mine he won in a poker game, they intend to.

   Of course close propinquity makes all the difference in the world, although the road to romance is never easy, and so it is here. In a pique of anger, Kay blurts out Matt’s secret, which causes a rift between him and his son, which makes a group of not very happy camping buddies for a while.

   A scene in which Matt cannot resist temptation and tries to kiss Kay, who is not particularly receptive at the time, comes surprisingly close to a rape scene, one that must have barely gotten by the censors.

   That Matt tosses Kay over his shoulder at the end seems to be an all-but-foregone conclusion throughout the movie, but if it were filmed today, I don’t think that scene would be included – unless for a comic effect that would otherwise not be called for.

   As for the two stars, Marilyn I don’t believe was ever lovelier, and nothing I could say could be more direct or emphatic than that. She may even have done her own singing in this movie, but I am kind of doubtful about the guitar playing.

   Robert Mitchum plays himself and second fiddle very nicely, in a role of a new father (to a son he’s only learning to know) in which he’s almost perfect, but not quite.

   As to the future to this new family (hopefully not giving too much away), some viewers may wonder how easily Kay may adjust to her new life. I suppose answering this question might have paved the way for another movie, a sequel, but on the other hand, why spoil the ending of this one?

PostScript.   I understand that the making of this movie was not easy, to say the least. Preferring to concentrate on the end results, I didn’t go into any of that in my comments above. I thought I should add this short paragraph here at the end, though, just so that you’d know I wasn’t totally unaware of the real world.

[UPDATE] 12-22-08.  There’s one thing I forgot to mention. The movie was filmed in CinemaScope or the equivalent, but the Cinemax channel that I taped it from definitely did not show a wide-screen version. Every so often, and too often as far as I was concerned, all we see of two people talking to each other in the same shot are their noses — and a wide expanse of countryside in between, or a close-up shot of a piano player busily working away behind them.

   I’ve just ordered what ought to be a much improved version on DVD from Amazon. Countrysides are nice, and the piano player is really quite terrific, but I’d really prefer to see the primary actors.

   Whoever it is in New England who’s dreaming of a White Christmas, would somebody wake him or her up?

   Eight inches of snow on Friday, impossible roads yesterday, and six more inches today. Come on. Enough is enough.

   But other than that, and a certain cooped up feeling, all is fine here, and I hope it is where you are, too.

         Happy holidays, everyone!

               —Steve

THE MUMMY. Universal, 1932. Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Arthur Byron, Edward Van Sloan, Bramwell Fletcher. Director: Karl Freund.

   I don’t suppose you’ve been waiting for me to review this movie before you decide to see it or not. It’s one the classics, that’s for sure, and yes, I saw this back when I was a young lad, around 10 or so, and it scared me something awful back then, but not as much as the kid from school sitting next to me — no, wait. That was Frankenstein, which I think was even scarier. I know the other kid from school thought so! I don’t remember ever seeing Dracula, though, even now.

   Today — returning as I should to The Mummy — I don’t think kids of 10 will be scared by this movie at all, having grown up on video games and movies rated R that they’ve managed to get in to see, or even PG-13, with all of the special effects and blood and gore.

   No blood and gore in this one, if I remember it correctly, and I just finished watching it not more than 10 minutes ago. It’s all in the mind. Special effects? Well, the bandaging job on the mummy was spot on. First, in the present day — when his tomb is opened, the inscription that awakens him is unwittingly read, and the mummy strolls out leaving shreds of unraveled cloth behind. (I must have only imagined the musty smell.)

   But even more vivid, to me, was the flashback scene taking place in the far distant past, when Im-ho-tep was first wrapped up in them from head to toe — and buried alive. Br-R-r-r-r. I think that this, the burial scene, gave me more chills than anything else in the movie. Some people seem to remember the the reawakening as what scared them the most, and while I don’t agree, I certainly don’t blame them.

    All in all, I don’t think The Mummy is as much of a horror movie than one based on the occult or reincarnation: the spirit of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon now resides in the physical body of Helen Grosvenor, played by the very bewitching Zita Johann in her own right.

   A movie based on either of these ideas would have been spooky enough in the 1930s without needing much in the way of extra trappings, or to a ten-year-old boy on a re-release some 20 years later.

EDWARD GRIERSON – A Crime of One’s Own. Chatto & Windus, UK, hardcover, 1967 (shown). G. P. Putnam’s Sons, US, hc, 1967. US paperback reprint: Berkley Berkley X1681, 1969.

   The setting for Edward Grierson’s A Crime of One’s Own is a busy, comfortable English provincial book shop. The owner, Donald Maitland, lets his imagination and curiosity get the best of him by coming to the conclusion that spies are responsible for the defacement of books and other strange happenings in his lending library.

   His early bumbling attempts to investigate and gradually decreasing remissions of sanity are humorous, but, midway in the book, he illegally enters the apartment of a girl he suspects of being a courier, is almost discovered, and is promptly arrested for her murder, which occurs later that night, by stabbing with his letter opener.

   Now Grierson has really gotten his hero and himself in the soup, and a series of delicate courtroom scenes of Donald’s trial, done in the manner of Henry Cecil, only delay the time when the unconvincing real spies have to be dragged out in order to get author and hero off the hook.

   The book shop, its employees and customers are well done.

      Bibliographic data:

   Says Wikipedia of the author:  “Edward Grierson (9 March, 1914 – 1975) was a Northumberland barrister and a writer of crime novels. His debut crime novel is the outstanding Reputation for a Song, a classic Inverted detective story.”

   Also the author of several works of historical fiction and non-fiction, Grierson wrote only four mystery novels. From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a complete list:

      Reputation for a Song. Chatto, UK, 1952. Knopf, US, 1953. Film: MGM, 1970, as My Lover, My Son (scw: William Marchant, Jenni Hall, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates; dir: John Newland).

      The Second Man. Chatto, UK, 1956. Knopf, US, 1956.
      The Massingham Affair. Chatto, UK, 1962. Doubleday, US, 1963.
      A Crime of One’s Own, Chatto, 1967. Putnam, US, 1967.