Some nagging medical issues will keep me from posting here for another few days. I’ll be back as soon as I can!

VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES. Republic Pictures, 1946. Robert Livingston, Lorna Gray (as Adrian Booth), Ian Keith. Director: Philip Ford.

   By the title alone, you might think this was a horror movie set in Louisiana or Haiti with menacing zombies at every turn. In this case, however, you’d be wrong.

   In fact, I’m not even sure that there is a single legitimate zombie in this Republic Pictures programmer. Rather, there’s a criminally insane man named Ormand Murks (Ian Keith) who has come back from the dead to take revenge on those who have wronged him. He has a thirst for human blood, making him more a vampire than a zombie. I guess technical definitions weren’t that important to the filmmakers. Vampires? Zombies? Who cares? Just make the villain unexplainably spooky and hope the audience slops it up.

   But don’t less this oversight dissuade you. Valley of the Zombies is a fun, supernatural thriller with a romantic duo of doctor and nurse (Robert Livingston and Lorna Gray) playing sleuths. When their boss is killed by Murks, they begin to seek answers. Along for the ride are some bumbling (and not so bumbling) detectives and policemen who don’t believe for a minute that an undead man may be behind a recent spate of murders.

   There’s some humor in the film as well, including a giant cop named Tiny. It’s all dismally mediocre B-film material, but as I said before, it’s actually kind of silly fun.
   

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH – Strangers on a Train: A Novel. W. W. Norton & Company, January 19, 2021. Introduction by Paula Hawkins. First edition: Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1950.

   Guy Haines isn’t sure what will happen when he gets off the train to meet his estranged wife Miriam. Her track record of infidelities should make divorce simple, but if she’s pregnant, she may make things awkward for Guy and his soon-to-be fiancée.

   When he commiserates with Charles Bruno in the train dining car about his situation, he doesn’t pay much Bruno’s talk about having an insufferable father and how two people could “trade murders.” After police find Miriam’s strangled body in an amusement park, Bruno reappears, demanding that Guy “hold up his end of the deal.”

   Strangers on a Train is Highsmith’s first published novel, so there are moments where her style feels unvarnished compared to later works (Deep Water, the Tom Ripley novels). But she already knows how to create a vivid scene, especially the inner torments as her hero agonizes over how to escape Bruno’s game.

   While later books were more obviously literary (The Talented Mr. Ripley riffs on Henry James’ 1903 novel The Ambassadors), she already shows a clever ability to invert crime fiction into something stranger. Paula Hawkins’ introduction to this 2020 edition highlights how scarily Highsmith encourages readers to question what makes murder wrong, or if it is so bad after all.

   Hawkins also highlights how Highsmith uses a “pared-back, laconic style” to describe horrible crimes as well as everyday things (the sort of casual tone about murder contemporary readers associate with writers like Bret Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk). Put these elements together, not to mention the fine line between hate and love Hawkins notices is very thin indeed in some Highsmith stories, and this book becomes far creepier than it appears.

   If Highsmith is important to noir, and it’s probably impossible to talk about the genre without mentioning her, it’s because she excels at handling this ambiguity. Where other novelists draw clear lines between stalker and victim, tempter and innocent, she quietly suggested that these characters may be more similar, more drawn to each other, than they want to admit.

   It may not feel transgressive as Ellis, Palahniuk, or later female virtuosos like Gillian Flynn, but Highsmith was a master at producing a thriller that slowly invites readers into something more genre-bending and perverse than they expect.

RAOUL WHITFIELD – Laughing Gas.  Steeger Books. paperback, 2021. Originally serialized in Black Mask,  February 1929 to October 1929.  Revised and reprinted in book form as Five, by Temple Field.

   In his introduction to the Steeger reprint, James Reasoner uses the term “word savagery” which was coined by Lester Dent to describe the quality Black Mask brought out in writers, and that certainly fits Raoul Whitfield though I prefer the Raymond Chandler’s term ‘the poetry of violence.” Anyway you put it, Raoul Whitfield was a master of the form, the third spoke of the wheel that included Hammett and Chandler as the best Black Mask has to offer.

   Laughing Gas was Whitfield’s first attempt at a novel length work, written as a series of tightly connected short stories and intended to be published as a fix-up novel. It ended up replaced by another Whitfield serial, Green Ice, that would become Whitfield’s first novel (and wisely, it is a better book) while Laughing Gas was rewritten and published as Five, under the by-line Temple Field. This trade paperback edition from Steeger Books Black Mask collection is the works first appearance in its original form since its publication in the 1929 pages of Black Mask.

   The book covers nine stories. Gary Greer, the two-fisted protagonist, sets out to avenge the murder of his Prosecutor father Stanford by gangsters who laughed while he died at their brutal hands. Greer, a pilot in charge of the local airport, sets out for revenge, and neither the law nor criminals are going to deter him in his singular minded pursuit.

   This is Mike Hammer country, a revenge story much like Whitfield’s similar Green Ice and savage is a fair description of what happens as Greer tracks down the five men who killed his father.

   Whitfield wrote as much or more aviation fiction as crime novels including several juvenile aviation novels. This one mixes the two genres, flying and hardboiled action and does so in a convincing tough guy voice that compels the narrative along like an express train.

   It is a far pulpier work than his best hardboiled novel, Death in a Bowl, a work that comes close to rivaling Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, but it reads surprisingly modern in style, another Mask attribute. The dark salon cars speeding down roads, vintage planes, and Tommy guns may be dated, but the writing is as contemporary as anything you’ll read today.

   
   In addition to revenge intrigue and murder there is a well handled romance that leads you to wonder how Hollywood missed this one. Of course they would have had to tone it down a bit because Greer is a fairly grim avenger adopting multiple identities, names, and faces as he takes his revenge on hoods with colorful names like Frenchy Lamotte, Doll Jacobs, Sal the Dude, and “Fifty Mile” Liseman.

   Whitfield just misses the quality that set Hammett and Chandler apart from the pack, and it is hard to define exactly what it is. It may be because he never quite finds that single voice protagonist (though Death in a Bowl comes close and Jo Gar is a fine creation) or spread himself too thin with his other pulp work. I can’t say exactly. I know at his best he writes as well as either Hammett or Chandler with that same word savagery Reasoner mentions, but he also writes with just the slightest bit less conviction and dedication.

   Granted there is a fairly contrived twist at the end that allows for a happy ending, but it’s the pulps and the kind of thing common in movies at the time, and I can’t bring myself to complain much. After all that an unconvincing path to a happy ending seems a small price to pay. You wouldn’t want Whitfield’s protagonist taking revenge on you because you messed with his happy ending, believe me.

   Just let him have it and lump it.

STEPHEN LEATHER “Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish.” Novelette. Inspector Zhang #1. First published in 2011, perhaps in ebook format. Collected in The Eight Curious Cases of Inspector Zhang (Monsoon Books, softcover, 2014).

   The problem with most (almost all) locked room short fiction is that the stories are to short to include any personal information about the characters. It is the facts of the case that are important, nothing more and nothing less. This is one of latter, but did I mind? Not at all.

   Inspector Zhang’s purview is Singapore, and such is the state of security there that there are practically no murders in the city, much less those of the “locked room” variety. Inspector Zhang’s long time ambition is to have one to solve. Which he does, most handily, quoting often from John Dickson Carr’s work in general and the novel The Hollow Man (1935) in particular.

   Dead in his hotel room, the door of which was watched at all of times by a security TV camera in the outside hallway, is a wealthy American tourist, killed by what appears to have been a knife, but which is not found in the room.

   The solution is a simple one, relatively speaking, but it will still take a careful reader to catch the crucial clue. A fact that does not include me, I am embarrassed to tell you, but truth, as the old saying goes, will always out.

   Nicely done.

THE ENFORCER. Warner Bros., 1951. Humphrey Bogart, Zero Mostel, Ted De Corsia, Everett Sloane. Directors: Bretaigne Windust, Raoul Walsh (the latter uncredited).

   I initially didn’t know exactly what to make of The Enforcer. It’s structured in such a way that a viewer could get lost in the proceedings. Not only are there flashbacks, but there are flashbacks within flashbacks and, if I am being honest, I found myself somewhat disappointed with the film by the halfway mark. But I am really glad I continued watching, because by the time this Humphrey Bogart movie wraps up, you realize that the intricate narrative structure does the story justice and then some.

   Directed by Bretaigne Windust (with the action sequences helmed by an uncredited Raoul Walsh), this picture stars Bogart as Ferguson, a crusading district attorney tasked with prosecuting Mendoza (Everett Sloane), the boss of a murder-for-hire syndicate. When his star witness, Rico (Ted De Corsia) falls to his death, he is forced to find another witness who could put Mendoza in the chair, and that’s where the aforementioned flashbacks come in.

   Ferguson begins to revisit the case and hopes to find some forgotten detail that could help him as the clock ticks down to the next day’s courtroom proceedings. As it turns out, there is one witness who can positively identify Mendoza for committing a years ago murder at an all night diner. Whether Ferguson can find and save her before the killers get to her provides the necessary suspense to keep the viewer engaged.

   One thing that irked me a little about the movie is how some of the toughest criminals in the murder-for-hire racket go completely soft as the first sign of trouble. Rico, the tough as nails ringleader of the outfit, becomes implausibly scared of Mendoza when he decides to testify against him.

The same goes for Zero Mostel’s character, Big Babe Lazick, who whimpers in police custody, and for hired killer Duke Malloy (Michael Tolan) whose teary confession to the cops is pivotal to how the investigation plays out.

   I get what the filmmakers were going for – namely, that Mendoza is such a ruthless man that even the hired killers who work for him are terrified of him – but it really doesn’t work to the film’s benefit.

   That said, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. The Enforcer reminded me somewhat of The Killers (1946). It’s not quite at that level. But it’s solid movie-making and benefits immensely from Bogart’s presence. I’m not quite sure that anyone else would have been as good in the role. Final note: a lot of crime movies from this era are erroneously called film noir. For what it’s worth, this one I think fits that category well. Thumbs up.

   I’ve read three novels by Friedrich Duerenmatt, and while I was reading them, I thought each was going to be a dismal flop. But two of them, The Judge and His Hangman and Traps, ended up intriguing me.

   Judge… features one Inspector Barlach, an aged policeman of the mild-mannered-little-old-man type that is a fixture of some polite mysteries. Indeed, Barlach seemed so tame that he reminded me of Inspector Fernack (Jonathan Hale) in those wretched George Sanders “Saint” movies.

   The premise of Judge, come to think of it, sounds like a Saint novel in reverse. Barlach has for years been yapping at the heels of a criminal who fancies himself an international adventurer, one Gastmann. And the years have treated the two antagonists much as Charteris treated the Saint and Mr. Teal. Gastmann has grown suave, wealthy and handsome, his charismatic style betraying no hint of his many crimes. Conversely, Barlach has grown into a tired, dyspeptic fumbler.

   I liked the reverse/underdog theme of Judge but the plot seemed (I stress “seemed’) to lack progress When his supercop protege is murdered, Barlach — despite the aid of a new and eager assistant — is unable to cone to grips with Gastmann, who constantly harasses and foils him.

   For several chapters, I wondered if any of this were going anywhere at all, of if it could be the German version of a Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd conflict. Then, at the end of Chapter 13, after yet another humiliation, Barlach says to Gastmann:

   “… I have judged you, Gastmann, and I have condemned you to death. You will not survive the day. The hangman I have chosen for you will come for you today. You will recognize him. And he will kill you because, in the name of God, this is a job that inevitably must now be done.”

and from that point on, the plot jumps onto the tracks and moves — with a burst of action — to a nicely-realized dramatically ironic conclusion.

   Traps seemed at first to be astonishingly predictable. Alfredo Traps, travelling salesman stranded in a small town, seeks a bed for the night at the lonely house of an eccentric old man. Turns out, the old man is a retired Judge and (heh-heh) wants Traps to join him and his friends in a little (heh-heh-heh) game. Yes, says the Judge (laughing up his sleeve) let me introduce you to the other guests. My old friend here used to be a Prosecutor. And this other guy was once a Defense Attorney. That third fellow over there? The quiet one? Well sir (hee-hee-hee) Old Emil used to be an Executioner.

   The game they all play — each night with a different guest — is a Mock Trial. That’s right, with the guest as defendant. Well, maybe Traps doesn’t think he’s committed any crimes, but let’s just ask him a few questions …

   “Cor!” sez I to meself at this point, “They’re gonna kill’im. I’ve read this dreck in comic books.”

   But what actually happened surprised and immensely satisfied me. It also made me think a minute or two. Or maybe a little longer.

   The feeling I carried away with me from each of these books was perplexing. (Oh, by the way, the other Duerenmatt I read was The Pledge. Bad show, Friedrich.) In both cases, the plot seemed inordinately tired and showed no evidence of inspired handling for the greater part of the book. And both times, Duerenmatt wrapped it up with a perfectly logical, intensely dramatic, and completely unexpected end.

   What perplexes me is this: Is Duerenmatt a better or a worse writer because of the work it takes to meet the rewarding endings of these things? Must the triteness of the plots be so apparent? I dunno.

   I should add by way of bibliographic note that The Judge and the Hangman was first printed in his country in 1955 and Traps was written in 1956. I have_a lingering memory of a movie version of Judge. That is, I think I once saw an ad for it, but I can find no mention of it in any film reference book.

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ – Platform. Originally published in France as Plateform, 2001. Vintage, trade paperback, July 2004. Translated by Frank Wynne.

   Michel is a single, 40 year old civil servant in the bureau of cultural affairs. His job is to randomly sponsor art events for promising new artists. He gets to decide what’s ‘promising’. He’s good at his work but he’s on autopilot. His heart’s not in it.

   His dad dies. They weren’t close. But he left a healthy inheritance. He takes a vacation.

   So he goes in one those all expenses paid jobs, with a group of 30 strangers, they fly to Thailand.

   Thailand is great for the sex tourism. And that’s really the main attraction for guys like him, other out of shape, middle aged, French and German men, come to sleep with the beautiful, young Thai girls. So expert in their craft.

   One of the other vacationers, Valerie, shows an interest in Michel. Her face is plain but she has a great body. They talk a few times. She makes herself obvious. He gets drunk and passes out. On the last day, he asks for her number. Why? She looks at him in disbelief, then writes her number on a card a gives it to him with a shrug.

   So he calls her. And so begins a torrid affair. Valerie is the most giving of lovers. Turns out she works for the travel company. She’s actually doing quite well.

   Valerie and Michel become inseparable. And he begins to get involved in her work. She is thinking up a way to make more money at the failing resorts her company owns in Cuba and Thailand, the Ivory Coast and the Dominican. They come up with the idea of ‘Aphrodite vacation packages’ — where the marketing makes the sex tourism implicit. And the idea is a winner. The resorts explode in popularity.

   Unfortunately, that might not be the only explosion as Islamic terrorists start targeting these sex resorts for their immorality.

   And that, dear reader, is that.

         ——

   It was a pretty effective piece of work. It reeled me in. I’m not normally the kinda guy who wants to read about international sex tourism. But the thing was told with surgical precision. And the sudden terrorist violence in the midst of the montage of drab bureaucratic mundanity and sexual abandon — Yeah. I’ll remember it and it was pretty damned good.

CHINA. Paramount Pictures, 1943.  Loretta Young, Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Philip Ahn, Iris Wong, Sen Yung, Marianne Quon. Director: John Farrow.

   Although it was surely marketed as a patriotic flag waver during World War II, China really does stand the test of time. It remains a solid adventure/war film that has a lot going for it. Directed by John Farrow with some outstanding tracking shots, the film stars Alan Ladd as Mr. (David) Jones, an oil salesman and war profiteer living in Shanghai.

   China may be at war with the Japanese, but America is not. So he sells oil to the Japanese, irrespective of their geopolitical ambitions. Along for the ride is his sidekick Johnny Sparrow (William Bendix), a sentimentalist who longs for his small hometown in Oregon.

   Things change when Mr. Jones encounters an American schoolteacher (Loretta Young) and her Chinese students and agrees to drive them away from the front lines. Things really heat up when Mr. Jones witnesses Japanese cruelty firsthand. That really sets him off. Soon enough, he teams up with the Chinese guerrilla fighters to wage war on the invading Japanese military.

   While there are some maudlin moments in the film, overall China remains primarily an action-oriented motion picture. There’s plenty of grit and explosions aplenty. It’s definitely worth a look, particularly if you appreciate Ladd as a leading man. Here, with his fedora, leather jacket, and name, he’s a proto-Indiana Jones!

      Have a great day, everyone!