THE 13th MAN. Monogram Pictures, 1937. Weldon Heyburn, Inez Courtney, Selmer Jackson, Matty Fain, Milburn Stone, Grace Durkin, Robert Homans, Eadie Adams. Director: William Nigh.

   When it comes to the movie The 13th Man, there seems to be a large disconnect between me and the rest of the IMDb film-watching universe. The latter has given this rather turgid mystery melodrama an accumulated 5.9 stars, and I would be hard pressed to give it two.

   The basic premise is not bad. The current District Attorney, with a highly contested election coming up, reminds his radio audience that he has put 12 major crime figures behind bards so far, and on the next day he will be starting indictment proceeding on a 13th major underworld figure in the city. Which well-deserved individual will it be? This is the kind of city where there are any number of candidates.

   But will the D.A. survive till the next morning? You can answer that at once. He dies at ringside that same evening with a curare dart found in his neck. Investigating the case one step ahead of the police are radio reporter Swifty Taylor (Weldon Heyburn) and his secretary (who is secretly in love with him), Julie Walters (Inez Courtney). Swifty, it seems, is not all that swift.

   But from this point on, the story and the no-name cast go absolutely nowhere. It is one of those movies that make your eyeballs ache just watching it, but sometimes an investment of 20 minutes into a movie makes you want to keep watching it, just in case something interesting happens.

   There is one twist that I probably should have seen coming, but I didn’t. I can’t tell you what it is, just in case you decide to ignore these comments of mine. Perhaps the no-name cast has more of a name than I realize, but the only two actors who show any enthusiasm for being in this movie are Milburn Stone (then a mere 33 years old), playing Swifty’s assistant, and considerably more elderly Robert Homans, who often had small roles as policemen in his movie-making career, and so he was once again in this one.

   The real culprit is intended as a surprise, but not quite picking a name from a hat, he (or she) was exactly who I suspected all along.

LINDA BARNES – Bitter Finish. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1983. Fawcett, paperback, 1985. Dell, paperback, 1994.

   Michael Spraggue is falling down a flight of steps, the voice of his stunt instructor screaming at him to use his thighs and hips to break the impact of the sharp cement. As the star of Hollywood’s latest private-eye melodrama, shooting on location in Boston, Spraggue leaves the car chases to the pros, but the light stunts he likes to do himself.

   An independently wealthy ex-private investigator turned actor, he’s quit the business because he’s “mostly dug up dirt everybody would have been better off not knowing.” But an emergency phone call summons him back to California’s Napa Valley, where Kate Holloway, his not quite ex-lover and longtime business partner in the Holloway Hills Winery, is in jail as a material witness to murder.

   Kicking and screaming (he really does hate being a private eye), Michael flies to the rescue. The victim is Holloway Hills’ flamboyant Hungarian winemaker — the second in what the papers are calling the “car trunk murders.” Kate is notorious in the valley — she’s six feet tall, gorgeous, and makes as good a wine as many male vintners — and the not-so-bright deputy sheriff is certain she’s a killer as well. Michael seems to be the only person on the scene smart enough to figure out who stashed those cadavers in the trunks of cars, and the deputy sheriff, of course, won’t talk to him.

   The complicated love situation between Spraggue and Kate is probably the most interesting part of this story, although Barnes does give us a lovely picture of the Napa Valley at harvest time and lots of detail on the wine making industry. The action moves well, the clues are nicely hidden, and the reader isn’t bored — but neither is the reader glued to the edge of his seat.

   Spraggue ends up, predictably, all by his lonesome with a crazed killer in a deserted winery at the end of a rarely traveled road. The writing is light, entertaining, and stylistically sound; and hopefully as Linda Barnes matures as a writer, so will Spraggue and company.

   Michael Spraggue also appears in Dead Heat (1984).

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   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.

Bibliographic Notes:   Spraggue’s first appearance was in Blood Will Have Blood (1982). A fourth and final book in the series was Cities Of The Dead, published in 1986. In 1987 Linda Barnes switched series characters and wrote A Trouble of Fools, the first of twelve novels featuring cab-driving PI Carlotta Carlyle, based in Boston.

MILDRED PIERCE. Warner Brothers, 1945. Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg. Screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on the novel by James M. Cain. Director: Michael Curtiz.

   I recently saw Mildred Pierce and came away just dumbfounded that anyone – even a Movie Critic – could watch this movie and fail to notice the strong, even idiosyncratic, hand of director Michael Curtiz at work. Take the opening: A mildly-surprised-looking Zachary Scott, seen in a mirror, shuddering under the impact of bullets hitting his frame, even as the mirror splinters and shatters, just as he hits the floor and rolls into full close-up before our eyes. In terms of screen time, it’s only a few seconds, but visually, it’s an incredibly complex blend of deft mise-en-scene and seamless editing, knowingly orchestrated by a master of the form.

   Surprisingly enough, Curtiz manages to steer the film from this dizzy beginning through a palpaceous plot of Mother Love, Teenage Lust and Middle-aged Greed without once letting the pace falter. He keeps it right at the hungry edge of violence, like an addict staring at a needle, for nearly two hours’ fast-paced running time, and gets deft performances along the way from the likes of Bruce Bennett, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blythe and — inevitably — Joan Crawford.

   Ah yes, Joan Crawford. In the role that revived her career. The cult of her personality, I fear, has always obscured the virtues of this remarkable film, just as Bogart’s cult “obscured” Casablanca: by shining so much Star Power on it that it ceased to be a film, and became instead a shrine, whence the Faithful are called several times a year to bask their idols in adoration.

   Which offers a clue to Curtiz’ critical neglect: He was so good at enshrining major personalities (including Flynn, Cagney, Bette Davis and even Boris Karloff) that their fans always tended to overlook him — forgetting that gods do not exist until someone builds temples to them – and critics never noticed the consistent stylistic complexity that he lavished on even his minor films. Thus he became an “anonymous” director to folks who just wasn’t looking.

   Getting back to Mildred Pierce, though, it’s a lavish blend of Mystery, Soap Opera and even pre-feminist rhetoric, and though the icons who populate this particular temple have remained somewhat critically unfashionable, the showcase itself deserves a fresh look.

PASSENGER 57. Warner Brothers, 1992. Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne, Tom Sizemore, Alex Datcher, Bruce Greenwood, Robert Hooks, Elizabeth Hurley. Director: Kevin Hooks.

   I don’t know how you can live as long as I have and still be able to say that this is the first movie starring Wesley Snipes that I have even seen, but it is so. I see from his resume on IMDb that over his career he has made quite a few action thriller movies like this one, and as of 2014, he was still making them, if The Expendables 3 is the kind of movie I think it is.

   This one has to do with a notorious terrorist and a gang of equally vicious followers with the same carefree attitude toward killing that he has. To help rescue their leader from the FBI, they take over a passenger jet that Snipes’ character, a newly promoted chief of security, just happens to be a passenger on.

   I don’t think the movie is as good as those in the “Diehard” series, say, but I enjoyed it. There is a light touch to the movie that makes all of the gunfire, martial arts fighting, explosions and every other means of organized chaos all the more bearable, such as when one elderly female passenger mistakenly takes Snipes’ character to be Arsenio Hall.

   The ladies in the cast are, unfortunately, the weakest links, in my opinion, but all of the men are consummate pros at this sort of thing, especially the primary villain (Bruce Payne), who seems to be having a great time playing pure evil incarnate, and with his glowering presence, taking over every scene he’s in.

   But here’s the question. Would I watch another Wesley Snipes movie? Based on this sample of size one, I see no reason why not.

S. S. VAN DINE – The Kennel Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1933. Reprinted many times, including Bantam #60, paperback, 1946. Film: 1933, with William Powell as Vance.

   The circumstances of the death of Archer Coe indicate suicide. He was, after all, in a room locked on the inside, with the revolver with which he was shot still in his hand. Fortunately, Philo Vance is asked to observe the scene, and he claims it was murder — but not caused by the bullet.

   One of the clues is a badly hurt Scottish terrier found in the house. The reader learns a lot about terriers and show dogs as Vance lectures on the animals. At the end, the dog leads, in a manner of speaking, Vance to the murderer.

   In my opinion, Van Dine is undeservedly maligned. What’s wrong with a highbrow mystery containing occasional and intentional amusement and fair, albeit far-fetched, play? That’s what we have here, and I think it’s most enjoyable.

From Beyond is a 1986 film based on the story of the same name by H. P. Lovecraft. Richard Band wrote the film score.

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB. Hammer Films, UK, 1964. Columbia Pictures, US, 1964. Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, Fred Clark, Jeanne Roland,George Pastell, Jack Gwillim, John Paul, Dickie Owen. Screenwriter-director: Michael Carreras.

   Directed, written (under the credited name “Henry Younger”), and produced by Michael Carreras, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb is a Hammer film about well … you guessed it, an archaeological expedition that unearths a mummy’s tomb and becomes the object of the mummy’s revenge.

   Ronald Howard, perhaps best known for starring in the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series, portrays John Bray, a Cambridge archaeologist who seeks to unravel the mysteries of the ancient Egyptian past. After his French colleague is murdered in the desert, he and his would-be betrothed, Annette Dubois (Jeanne Roland) make their way by boat up the Nile with the intention of returning to London.

   It is on that fateful trip that they encounter Adam Beauchamp (Terence Morgan), a mysterious Englishmen who inserts himself into their lives and knows far more about ancient Egyptian history than it first appears. But who is he and what does he want with Annette? That’s the crux of the story.

   When compared with Hammer’s The Mummy (1959) that I reviewed here, this later film comes across as a rather tepid and an uninspiring attempt to capitalize upon the former’s aesthetic, narrative, and musical genius. Indeed, without Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, the movie just isn’t all that memorable in terms of its actors and their stage presence. But that doesn’t mean that one should completely write off this admittedly clunky mid-1960s horror film as purely derivative and as having no particular intrinsic value as a film onto itself.

   Although this is not a particularly well-crafted film, it’s actually significantly better than its harshest critics would suggest. True, often the art design leaves a lot to be desired and the supposedly ancient Egyptian artifacts look cheap and plastic. And yes, the story takes a well to fully coalesce into a coherent narrative. That said, however, the film does compensate for these flaws by introducing a few new elements and surprises into the mummy film corpus.

   These include a subplot with an inherent critique as to how mummies were often used in the West for cheap thrills and entertainment purposes and (Spoiler Alert) the finale in which it is revealed in which the film’s nominal villain is the mummy’s brother, who is revealed to be Beauchamp (Morgan).

    Due to a curse, he has been condemned to everlasting life as a mortal human being roaming the Earth alone for thousands of years. It’s a curious little twist, one that’s just enough to rescue The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb from the obscurity it that would have befallen it had merely been a weak reworking of the brilliant Hammer original.

KAREN KIJEWSKI – Copy Kat. Kat Colorado #4. Doubleday, hardcover, 1992. Bantam, paperback, 1993.

   I think that Karen Kijewski (pronounced, I am told, Kee-you-skee) is rapidly moving into the class of Muller, Grafton, and Paretsky in terms of quality, if not of sales.

   In this case, Kat Colorado is hired to investigate the murder of a Grass Valley, California, bartender-owner by the victim’s crusty godfather. Though reluctant to get involved in an open case, Kat agrees to go undercover and work at her old profession, bartending, to try and find what really happened. Though there is no evidence, the police and many town members suspect the dead lady’s husband, who has been left with their small child. He hires Kat as a bartender, and the hunt is joined.

   The book is as much about Kat’s own problems with guilt from a killing in a previous case as anything; she is being crippled by recurring nightmares. The opportunity to change identities weighs strongly in her decision to accept the case. Missing from this book are her egregiously imposing “best friend,” and her adopted grandmother, for which I am grateful; earlier books have suffered greatly, to me, from Kat’s allowing herself to be sorely put upon by these two.

   Kijewski’s writing is powerful, and Colorado has emerged as an appealing and well realized character. Some of the other cast members were not as believable, or perhaps there were just too many neuroses/psychoses in one plot. All in all, though, this was an excellent and moving story.

       The Kat Colorado series —

Katwalk (1988)
Katapult (1990)

Kat’s Cradle (1992)
Copy Kat (1992)
Wild Kat (1994)

Alley Kat Blues (1995)
Honky Tonk Kat (1996)
Kat Scratch Fever (1997)
Stray Kat Waltz (1998)

SUE GRAFTON – X.   G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, August 2015; paperback “premium edition,” August 2016.

    Going back to read my review of W Is for Wasted, I see some significant signs of how Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series was progressing back then, and to my mind, the answer is not well.

    First of all, I said, “The case itself is not all that interesting…,” then I said:

    “I’m also not sure why Grafton has Kinsey relate everything she does, down to the minutest bit of minutia possible, whether it be meals, areas of town she drives through, or the GNP of the nation.”

    In X, the case is even less interesting than in W, with much of the the story dealing with loose threads left behind from the earlier one, and Grafton’s penchant to spell out in detail everything Kinsey does, from preparing breakfast, dealing with her landlord Henry’s cat, to delineating every turn along the way, complete with street names, whenever she drives from one place in the fictional town of Santa Teresa to another, seems to have gotten worse.

    Half of what happens in the first 192 pages is banal and uninteresting (see above). The other half, dealing with one of the two cases she seems to be on (they may yet be connected), something to do with a lawsuit that took place years and years ago, as well as a coded list of names of women connected with it, is even less compelling.

    And this is as far as I got. There are still 240 pages to go, and I see no promise of improvement. If reviewers are not supposed to review books they haven’t finished, I will promise to do better next time.

SO DARK THE NIGHT. Columbia Pictures, 1946. Steven Geray, Micheline Cheirel, Eugene Borden, Ann Cordee, Helen Freeman, Gregory Gaye, Jean de Val, Paul Marlon, Theodore Gottlieb (Brother Theodore). Screenplay by Martin Berkeley and Dwight Babcock. Story by Aubrey Wisberg. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

   Is there a darkness in all of us? That question haunts film noir, as essential to the genre as the black and white screen and the clever camera angles. So Dark the Night is the most unlikely of film noir despite being from the directorial hand of Joseph H. “Wagon wheel” Lewis, who here lives up to both his reputation and his nickname with many shots framed through windows and metal bed frames.

   Henri Cassin (Steven Geray), the finest detective of the Sûreté, is being sent on a much postponed vacation by his friend and superior Commissar Grande (Gregory Gaye) and the Bureau’s doctor, Dr. Monet (Jean de Val), to the quiet village of San Margot. Cassin is a humble quiet man, exhausted by his many important cases and his absolute devotion to duty. As his superior says, he would “… turn in his own grandmother if he was convinced of her guilt.”

   Arriving at the inn in San Margot, Cassin is immediately charmed by Nanette (Micheline Cheirel), the daughter of the Innkeeper Pierre (Eugene Borden) and his wife Madame Michaud (Ann Cordee). Pierre is delighted to have the famous man for his guest, as is barmaid and housekeeper Widow Birdelle (Helen Freeman), but he sees no good in his beautiful but scheming daughter and wife setting their caps for the detective, especially when Nanette is already engaged to the poor farmer Leon (Paul Marlon).

   Despite Pierre’s best efforts, and Leon’s threats, Nanette and Mama proceed with their plans, and soon the quiet and unassuming Cassin asks Nanette to marry him. On the night of their betrothal Pierre warns Cassin that the marriage cannot be, and sure enough Leon arrives and then storms out followed by Nanette.

   Cassin is heartbroken, and all assume the young couple have eloped, but a week later, as Pierre and Mama have grown concerned, the hunchback Georges (Theodore Gottlieb, performance artist Brother Theodore) arrives with the news Nanette has been found in the river, dead.

   Her death is no drowning though. She has been strangled. Suspecting the jealous Leon murdered her and placed her in the river, Cassin, the police, Georges, and Pierre walk to his farm, but there they find him murdered too, with only a single clue, a footprint hidden under Leon’s body.

Cassin now has a double murderer on his hands and nowhere to turn. There is no motive, and the devilish killer has erased every clue. Then a note is delivered to Cassin by Widow Birdelle, another will die, and sure enough the killer strikes again.

   That is as far as I can go without giving away too much of this clever and dark exercise in film noir that benefits greatly from a lesser known cast, expert direction by Lewis, and an intelligent script. In addition to being a fine example of film noir this one is unusually a mostly fair play detective story, with Cassin showing his skills as a detective and a solution you should arrive at before the sleuth, but may not.

   Geray, a capable character actor, who seldom got to shine in a starring role is perfectly cast as the quiet unassuming sleuth who has spent all his life dedicated to his job and suddenly at a “certain age” finds the promise of youth and love, only to lose it. Eugene Borden is also good as Pierre, who loves his wife and daughter but knows their scheming can only come to no good.

   So Dark the Night is a B picture, a Columbia programmer at most, but one that is better than most A films. It is handsomely shot by Lewis with imaginative, but never intrusive, camera angles, and proceeds with the nightmare logic of the best noir while staying at the same time low key and realistic almost to the end.

   That ending is the only real melodrama in the film, and the one-time drama outweighs logic, but it is highly satisfying if you just go with it, as is this handsome intense little film.