Reviewed by DAVID VINEYARD:          


BLOODSUCKERS. Titan Film Distribution Ltd., UK, 1970, as Incense for the Damned. Chevron Pictures, US, 1971. Patrick MacNee, Peter Cushing, Alexander Davion, Patrick Mower, Johnny Sekka, Madeline Hinde, Edward Woodward, and Imogen Hassall as Chriseis. Screenplay by Julian Hoare, based on the novel Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven. Directed by Robert Hartford-Davis as Michael Burrowes.

   Before you get excited about that cast and the bona fides of this film know going in, it is, by any definition, a bomb.

   Brilliant Oxford don Richard Fountain (Patrick Mower) is missing in Greece, upsetting his friends back at Oxford including the man who expects him to fill his chair, Peter Cushing. Tony Seymour (Alexander Davion), a fellow friend and former student has arrived asked by the Foreign Office to look into Fountain’s case since there are hints of some trouble in Greece. Along with Penelope (Madeline Hinde) Richard’s fiance and friend and student Bob (Johnny Sekka) Seymour sets out for Greece where he enlists Major Longbow (Patrick MacNee) in the search.

   It soon turns out Fountain has gotten in with a fast and nasty set, in particular a silent beauty named Chriseis (Imogen Hinde) and there are a string of bodies in their wake — victims of a vampire. His friends rescue Fountain and return him to England but after consulting an expert on vampire cults (Edward Woodward) realize too late that Fountain himself is infected.

   This troubled film was rejected by everyone involved with it, not the least Simon Raven, the brilliant gadfly of low behavior among the upperclasses who wrote the novel it was based on. Raven, best known for the Alms for Oblivion and First Born of Egypt sequences of novels (and a co-author credit on one of the Bond films) following a group of less than noble nobility and upper class types across British society in the post war 20th Century, often wrote borderline genre fiction including the thriller Brother Cain, and the mystery novel Feathers of Death. Doctors Wear Scarlet (the title refers to the robes worn by those at Oxford with a doctorate), a psychosexual vampire novel, was his most successful blend of his subject and genre fiction, a genuine classic among admirers of vampire fiction (chosen one of the 100 Best), and well worth reading for lovers of the form.

   Raven’s brand of razor wit, bitchiness, suggested perversion (and actual perversion), the ruthless immorality of the upperclasses, suspense, intrigue, low humor, and gossip is never even suggested here, the best the film manages being a vague suggestion of bi-sexuality which at least was true to the novel. What Raven’s novels brilliantly serve cold and bitter this film doles out in overheated attempts at perversion that, for all the nudity, look like a Mid-Western high school drama class attempt at a production of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer.

   Cushing and MacNee do the best they can with guest star roles, but you have to wonder if MacNee was relieved mid-picture when his character plunges to his death at the end of the Greek segment. Woodward has the ungrateful role of explaining Raven’s very sexual take on vampirism (a metaphor for sex to begin with, or at least venereal disease in Stoker) in some attempt to bring reason to this mess of a film.

   The title has it half right. This film sucks.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


D. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF – Not for the Squeamish. Story collection. Background Book Ltd., UK, paperback, 1948.

   I can’t find out much about D. Scott-Moncrieff except that it was a pen name for one William Hardy, and not the Scott Moncrieff who translated Proust. Nor can I discover the origin of the stories that appear in this book. They have the look of having appeared in the British equivalent of pulp magazines, but I can find no reference to them.

   Whatever their origin, the nine stories in Not for the Squeamish are in the classic Weird Tales style, tight and chilling narratives of “cannibalism, vampires, a leper island… robots and a twentieth century auto da fé” to quote the blurb, with sundry demons and voodoo curses thrown in for gratuitous thrills.

   Scott-Moncrieff deals all this out with a certain amount of style as well. For example, when recounting the excesses of a zealous Nazi SS officer, he mentions, “…a long love poem, written on a large piece of human skin, removed from a prisoner’s back for that purpose. One of our corporals whose German is perfect says that it was very bad poetry and a lot of it was lifted bodily from Schiller.”

   I should perhaps fess up to a certain cruelty of my own because a little more research has shown that Squeamish is not an easy book to find, nor a cheap one to acquire. I picked up mine in a grubby used-book store / porno shoppe back in the 1970s, when they were still selling things like this on the cheap-o table, and only after I’d passed it up for several visits.

   Whatever the case, I’m glad I got it, happier still that I finally read it, and urge you to do the same should you be so lucky or so rich.

JOHN PENN – Mortal Term. Bantam, US, paperback, September 1986. First published in the US by Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, April 1985. Previously published in the UK by Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1984.

    “John Penn” was the joint pen name of Paula Harcourt and John H. Trotman. Under this byline they wrote some 20 mysteries: two stand-alones, then six with Inspector George Thorne before they switched to 12 with Chief Inspector Dick Tansey. This one is second of the Thorne books.

    This one barely passed the 50 page test (some don’t pass the 10 pages test), but although the crime seemed very minor, Penn seemed to have a good grasp of the characters they were writing about, so I kept reading, thinking that with characters that had kept me reading this far would eventually work themselves into a more serious situation — murder, presumably — in which character would be as important to the solution as the clues.

    It’s hard to say whether that’s true or not, and I shall attempt to explain why. It’s the headmaster of a British coed boarding school who’s in trouble throughout this one. In Part One, he’s caught (seemingly) trying to molest a young girl he picked up hitchhiking along the road. Part Two consists of all kinds of things that had gone wrong during the previous school term: his new wife accidentally kills a young boy in a motor accident; two older boys apparently give a younger one some pot that made him very ill; and a young girl tries to rid herself of a pregnancy she doesn’t want anyone to know about.

    Part Three is where Inspector Thorne finally makes an appearance, 96 pages into the book, just over half way through. Strangely enough it’s the case of child molestation he’s been given, but eventually murder is indeed done. Aha, at last, I thought.

    Alas, there is neither good detective work done, nor even fair play. All the good characterization in the world will not make up for Thorne stating as fact on page 175 something that was never even hinted at before. Pfui. Not a complete waste of time but almost.

HEAT OF ANGER. CBS-TV, 3 March 1972; 90m. Pilot for a proposed series to be called Fitzgerald and Pride. Susan Hayward (Jessie Fitzgerald), James Stacy (Gus Pride), Lee J. Cobb, Fritz Weaver, Bettye Ackerman, Jennifer Penny, Tyne Daly. Teleplay: Fay Kanin. Director: Don Taylor.

   In this better than average made-for-TV movie, Susan Hayward, her movie career well behind her, plays a high-powered defense attorney who is paired up with James Stacy, whose role is that of a young struggling former public prosecutor now trying to make a go of it on his own in small office on the lower levels of the building Jessie Fitzgerald owns.

   Their client is the owner of a large construction company who is accused of pushing a worker off the top of a tall work in progress. Motive? The young man (married) was having a fling with his estranged daughter.

   From what I’m told, Barbara Stanwyck was intended to have the leading role, but when she came down with kidney problems, Susan Hayward was given the part instead. There doesn’t seem to be any real chemistry between her and her co-star James Stacy, however, and there really was never any real reason the two of them should be working the same case together.

   Nor is this a case where detective work comes to play. It’s more of pop psychology sort of case: the dead man had spent his life pushing himself to every kind of limit he could find, and this is time that he kept the cherry bomb in his hand too long.

   But most of the cast have names you will recognize, and they surely didn’t get their reputation for turning in bad performances, nor do they here. While totally forgotten, I’m sure, it’s an entertaining movie, and if given the go-ahead, it might have lasted a season, probably not more.

Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:         

   

THE WALKING DEAD. Warner Brothers, 1936. Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hull, Barton MacLane. Director: Michael Curtiz.

   If you haven’t yet seen The Walking Dead, do so. You’re in for a real treat. But I don’t mean the AMC television show. No, I mean the taut programmer directed by famed Warner Brothers director Michael Curtiz. Starring the legendary Boris Karloff, this proto-noir thriller squeezes in melodrama, social commentary, and suspense in a running time just over an hour long. All that, and some beautifully filmed camera shots at unsettling angles and an economical use of light and shadow to convey meaning.

   The plot isn’t all that inventive. Karloff portrays John Ellman, an ex-con and general all around sad sack, who gets framed for the murder of the judge who put him in the slammer in the first place. Making matters even worse for the music-loving and piano-playing Ellman is the fact that his serpentine lawyer (Ricardo Cortez) is in bed with the very racketeers who framed him. Ellman’s sentenced to the chair and despite some last minute attempts to stay the execution, gets put to death.

   Or does he? Enter the bespectacled foreign scientist, one Dr. Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) who brings – you guessed it – Ellman back to life.

   Although he’s alive again, there’s something just not quite right about Ellman. Maybe he is beholden to supernatural forces from beyond the grave. Whatever the case may be, it’s not long until Ellman exacts revenge on the men who unjustly sentenced him to death. Blending horror with social realism, The Walking Dead is an effective thriller that’s well worth your time.
   

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


JEAN RAY – Malpertuis. Les Auteurs Associés, Bruxelles, 1943. Atlas Press Edition, 1998, translated by Iain White. Reprinted many times in French. Film: Malpertuis. Belgium, 1971; released in the US as The Legend of Doom House; directed by Harry Kümel, and starring Orson Welles, Susan Hampshire and Mathieu Carrière.

   This may be the high point of my Halloween reading this year, an intelligent, compassionate and eminently creepy book of highly unusual character.

   Malertuis (the title translates to “House of the Fox,” “House of Evil,” or “House of the Devil”; you pays your money and you takes your choice.) starts off in the classic mode with the story set in a narrative framework, introduced by a professional burglar:

   â€œIn the course of my career I have made a close study of the sound of footsteps heard in sleeping households—in much the same way as detectives have studied the ashes of pipes and cigars.”

   … who looted a monastery and found among the pricey relics a bunch of papers which he has correlated into the story we are about to read, as told by different players in the drama at different times.

   We start off with a quick snippet of pirates on a dicey mission at the far corners of the known world — the sort of thing Jack Sparrow might get into — then shift to who-knows-how-many years later, in an unnamed French city where the son of a pirate captain, a young man named Jean-Jacques, is summoned to Malpertuis, the home of his dying uncle, along with the rest of his relatives, to hear the particulars of his uncle’s will.

   This has been used as the set-up for countless Old Dark House thrillers, as has the ensuing codicil, which specifies that the claimants must reside in the house to inherit its fabulous wealth; one can almost see the grasping nebbishes being picked off one by one by some hooded phantom, or perhaps a killer ape; one never knows.

   This, however, is no ordinary assortment of relatives and Malpertuis proves to be a much different sort of abode than one might expect, even in a horror novel, as Jean-Jacques interacts with his sister, his aunts, and a beautiful cousin who loves him possessively but will never look at him. There are also miscellaneous hangers-on: a madman who haunts the halls crying for light, and unseen spirit that blows out candles as it moves through the house:

   â€œA hand pinched the wick and night flowed down the staircase like the waters of Hell.”

   … and assorted lovers who come to grisly ends, and then are never spoken of.

   Author Ray moves his tale gracefully from the monstrous to the metaphysical as Jean-Jacques seeks spiritual rescue from the forces that impute his fall to from grace, but this is no mere battle against the powers of Darkness; Ray uses the horror novel as a means of examining the very nature of theology and man’s relationship to whatever gods may be. And he does it with suspense, beauty and a hugely satisfying conclusion.

THE BACKWARD REVIEWER
William F. Deeck


BRANDON BIRD – Downbeat for a Dirge. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1952. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition. Also published as: Dead and Gone: Dell 857, paperback, 1955.

   While the sublettor of the apartment under Hampton Hume’s is with Hume and his wife, the woman rehearsing a song is murdered in a room below. During the wait for the police, the woman’s body is removed, presumably by the murderer, and an attempt is made to clean up the room.

   The murdered singer was a chanteuse, if there can be such a thing with a band playing Music Out of Dixie. A magazine illustrator and a former musician, Hume, who had appeared in two earlier novels, joins the band at police request when the band’s saxophonist disappears.

   If I relate my problems with the plot, it will give away essential information. So I’ll just say there were no more Hamp Hume mysteries after this one, no loss to the world of fiction.

— Reprinted from MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 1990, “Musical Mysteries.”

      The Hampton Hume series –

Death in Four Colors. Dodd Mead, 1950.

Never Wake a Dead Man. Dodd Mead, 1950.
Downbeat for a Dirge. Dodd Mead, 1952.

Note:   A fourth book by Brandon Bird, Hawk Watch (Dodd Mead, 1954), not in the Hume series, was reviewed earlier on this blog by Walter Albert. You can read his comments here, along with considerable biographical information about the authors: George Bird Evans, (1906-1998) & Kay Harris Evans, (1906-2007). Some discussion of a fifth book they wrote, The Pink Carrera (Dodd Mead, 1960), as by Harris Evans, is also included in Walter’s post.

MIMIC. Miramax, 1997. Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Alexander Goodwin, Giancarlo Giannini, Charles S. Dutton, Josh Brolin, Alix Koromzay, F. Murray Abraham. Based on the short story “Mimic,” by Donald A. Wollheim (Astonishing Stories, December 1942). Director: Guillermo del Toro.

   The basic plot is simple enough. A laboratory-created insect called the Judas breed is developed to kill off a city filled with cockroaches which are spreading a deadly disease primarily affecting children. Even though the new insects were specifically designed to die out within a single generation, you can guess what comes next.

   The reason both the story and the film is titled “Mimic,” is because the new insect creatures have developed by rapid evolutionary means a way of avoiding detection — and that is by outwardly mimicking their number one predator, humans.

   Not everyone in the cast makes it out of the movie alive, qualifying it as more of a horror film than a science-fictional one. Gorgeously if not sumptuously filmed, including plenty of small details, it’s a scary film, too — until, that is, the human-shaped insectoids actually appear on the screen. They’re ugly enough all right, but not nearly as fearsome as the anticipation.

   There are plenty of plot holes, too, which I needn’t go into, I suppose, as only someone such as myself who prefers story lines that make sense would care.

   Me, though, I wished that as much attention were made to the story line as was paid to the cinematography and special effects. It’s one of those movies that you have to decide to sit back and watch, without asking too many questions, hoping things will sort themselves out later. A second watching may answer some of the questions I had, but as for me, the one ride is the only ride I’m going to take.

Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:         


BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA. Embassy Pictures, 1966. John Carradine (Count Dracula), Chuck Courtney (William ‘Billy the Kid’ Bonney, Melinda Plowman, Virginia Christine, Harry Carey Jr., Walter Janowitz, Bing Russell. Director: William Beaudine.

   Fans of hybrid Westerns/vampire B-movies rejoice! For Billy The Kid vs. Dracula has all the elements one might expect in a film with such a captivating title. Things like clumsy dialogue and acting, silly special effects, and a plot just formulaic enough that almost works. But most importantly, Billy The Kid vs. Dracula has John Carradine in it.

   Now, if you’re not a fan of Carradine and don’t particularly care for his unique gait and voice, this obscure low-budget production definitely isn’t for you. If you are like me and happen to appreciate Carradine (all the while knowing he appeared in some truly dismal features), then you might appreciate how much he towers, both literally and figuratively, over all the other actors in the otherwise forgettable film. His portrayal of a vampire lurking about in the Old West is both campy and creepy. Although I am hardly a specialist on horror Westerns, I dare say there’s really nothing quite like it out there in any movie before or since.

   More than anything else, the movie’s premise is so absurd that it almost makes this ludicrous experiment in genre-bending a cult classic, one of those bad horror movies that’s so bad that it’s actually good. Almost being the key word.

THOMAS B. DEWEY – Nude in Nevada. Dell 6508, paperback original; 1st printing, April 1965.

   I’ve read one or two of Dewey’s PI Pete Schofield novels, but I don’t remember it (or both) being as lackluster as this one is. It starts out poorly, as far as I was concerned, and never gets any better as it goes along. It does have some good moments, though, enough to keep me hoping, and I ended up finishing it. With another author, less known to me, I probably wouldn’t have.

   Pete Schofield is one of the few tough PI’s of the 50s and 60s era who happened to be married, and happily so. It did cut down on his womanizing, though that never seemed to stop him from looking. In any case, as the books begins, Pete and Jeannie are driving somewhere through the Nevadan desert when their car breaks down, miles from anywhere.

   Or so he thinks at first. Then he remembers that by pure chance an old friend, Strangler Martin, just happens to own a small garage and poor man’s resort a few miles back and off the road a way. He and Jeannie hoof it there, only to find Martin and his wife being held prisoner of a gang of foreigners whose language Pete doesn’t recognize. Perfect timing. What are the odds?

   The gang has killed the cook, so obviously they mean business. Also a prisoner is a young lady who is completely naked but covered with tattoos, and when Pete and Strangler Martin manage scare off the bad guys (this really puzzled me, how they managed to pull this off) the lady is happy to have them take a closer look.

   Then adding to the absolute weirdness of the evening, a horde of soldiers from a nearby army base stops by, and a party breaks out. A case might be made that this was meant to be a screwball mystery, but to me, it doesn’t make any more sense now when I’m telling you this than when I was reading it. As I said earlier, I was hoping Dewey could go somewhere with this wacky beginning, but other than morphing into a long and uninteresting story of international espionage, as far as I am concerned, he never did.

   Otherwise all ends well, but since this is last recorded adventure of the Schofields, I’m afraid we’ll never know where Jeannie wants to get a tattoo, or in fact if she ever did.

      The Pete Schofield series —

And Where She Stops. Popular Library, 1957.
Go to Sleep, Jeannie. Popular Library, 1959.
Too Hot for Hawaii. Popular Library 1960.

The Golden Hooligan. Dell, 1961.
Go, Honeylou. Dell, 1962.

The Girl with the Sweet Plump Knees. Dell, 1963.
The Girl in the Punchbowl. Dell, 1964.

Only on Tuesdays. Dell, 1964.
Nude in Nevada. Dell, 1965.

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