Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:         

   

THE EIGER SANCTION. Universal Pictures, 1975. Clint Eastwood, (Jonathan Hemlock), George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy. Based on the novel by Trevanian. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

   There’s the visual of a man walking through the streets of Zurich, encountering another man who hands him something, and then making his way back to his apartment. Where he is promptly killed by an assassin.

   So begins The Eiger Sanction, a rather dated mid-1970s spy film directed by, and starring, Clint Eastwood. He portrays Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor and a retired killer for the government brought back into service to avenge the aforementioned Zurich murder of an American spy. It all sounds rather exciting on paper, but unfortunately the decidedly uneven pace of the movie makes it very difficult to stay fully engaged throughout the proceedings.

   That’s not to say that the movie is without its merits. One of the best things the film has going for it is its ensemble of oddball characters, misfits all, who work for C-2, a fictional spy agency tasked with double crosses, assassinations, and other dirty business.

   Leading the outfit is an albino ex-Nazi who goes by the name “Dragon” (Thayer David). There’s also his assistant Pope (Gregory Walcott) and a Black agent named (I kid you not) Jemima Brown (Vonetta McGee). And even though he may not be fully integrated with C-2, there’s also the smarmy and effeminate killer Miles Mellough (Jack Cassidy). All of these characters are one of a kind and will be rightfully remembered long after the plot is forgotten.

   What attracted viewers to The Eiger Sanction, however, was neither the cast nor the plot, but the action sequences. Yes, this is the one where Eastwood goes mountain climbing. It’s breathtaking, to be sure. But it’s not enough to overcome the movie’s weak points.

   What else? George Kennedy plays an important role in the film as Eastwood’s climbing instructor, but since I don’t want to give away spoilers, I’ll just say that his character is pivotal to the story’s ultimate outcome.

   My overall assessment is that this Eastwood outing tried too hard to make Clint the epitome of an affected 1970s cool and thus unintentionally relegated its status to being very much of that era. Hence, dated.
   

   Things have become more hectic than usual around the Lewis household. We’ll be back as soon as we can!

Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:         

   

VIRTUE. Columbia Pictures, 1932. Carole Lombard, Pat O’Brien, Mayo Methot, Jack La Rue, Shirley Grey, Ward Bond. Director: Edward Buzzell.

   A Columbia pre-Code production, Virtue is a well constructed romantic melodrama/crime film that doesn’t remotely feel dated. Directed by Edward Buzzell, who lent his tradecraft to both Marx Brothers films and musicals, the film stars Pat O’Brien and Carolyn Lombard as a working class New York City couple who run into their fare share of trouble after they get married at town hall.

   O’Brien portrays ambitious cab driver Jimmy Doyle who hopes to own his own gas station one day. Lombard portrays Mae, a prostitute who stays in the city despite a court order for her to leave town. Although Mae hopes to turn a new leaf and leave her old one behind, it’s only a matter of time before her past catches up with her.

   Doyle, for his part, is never quite able to reconcile with his wife’s past in the oldest profession. Mae, on the other hand, still isn’t able to shake off her former work associates and ends up being conned out of her money by Gert (Shirley Grey), another ex-prostitute. When Mae attempts to get money back from Gert, she ends up getting framed for murder by lowlife Toots (Jack La Rue).

   Just a fair warning: the crime aspect of the film really comes at the end of the movie, so it takes some patience to get there. But it’s worth the wait.

   The film also benefits from the presence of Ward Bond who portrays Doyle’s close friend. When I think of Bond, I tend to associate him with westerns (and for good reason), but here he portrays a fellow NYC cab driver. He doesn’t have a huge role, but his character is pivotal to how the crime/murder aspect of the plot is resolved.

   Overall assessment: an above average movie with great chemistry among the two leads.
   

STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES, Summer 1968. Editor: Robert A. W. Lowndes. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. Overall rating: *½.

COL. S. P. MEEK “The Black Mass.” Originally published in Strange Tales, November 1931. The monastery of St. Sebastian is attacked by Asmodeus, the master of a c oven celebrating the Black Mass. Is not made believable. (1)

EARL PEIRCE, JR. “The Last Archer.” Novelet. First published in Weird Tales, March 1937. A hated Crusader Knight, put under a curse by a dying Saracen, is condemned to die only at the hands of the world’s greatest archer. An electronics expert is brought to his deserted island castle to help him killing himself as his mirror image. Effectively weird, in spite of diary format. (3)

JAY TYLER “The Sight of Roses.” Lester Morrow thinks he has contacted the Devil in his efforts to have his unfaithful wife done away with, but his perfect plan works too well. Uneven writing, some good, most terrible. (1)

FERDINAND BERTHOUD “Webbed Hands.” Originally published in Strange Tales, November 1931. A South African uses a monstrously deformed assistant to kill female relatives for insurance money. The author uses clumsy inverted sentence structure as he generally displays ignorance of the English language. (0)

PAUL ERNST “Hollywood Horror.” Dr. Satan #3. Novelet. Originally published in Weird Tales, October 1935. Dr Satan invents a ray that makes flesh invisible and uses it to threaten the motion picture industry, Not very scientific to be sure, but fun reading. (2)

— October 1968.
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Susan Dunlap

   

FREDERICK FORSYTH – No Comebacks. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1982 Viking, US, hardcover, 1982. Bantam, US, paperback, 1983. Reprinted many times since.

   The ten stories gathered here carry out the same theme as Forsyth’s novels, detailing the work of competent professional men who are single-mindedly committed to achieving their goals. Forsyth details their preparations for their missions with loving thoroughness, and follows their plans through to their logical conclusions.

   Some of his heroes succeed; some don’t. But if they don’t, it is because of some strange quirk that the hero could not have foreseen. More often than not, human frailty is what produces the splendid final twists in a number of the stories.

   “No Comebacks” is the cleverest example of this: The _signs of what is to happen to city of London “golden-boy tycoon” Mark Sanderson are obvious all along, yet the ironic climax is still surprising and leaves us with a satisfied smile. In “There Are No Snakes in Ireland” (which won the MW A Edgar for Best Short Story of 1983), it is the bigotry of certain Irish (in this case against an Indian student named Harkishan Ram Lal) that proves to be the true villain. As in this award-winning story, Forsyth also used his experiences while living in Ireland in “Sharp Practice,” a tale of a highly unusual poker game on a train. And in “A Careful Man,” an individual whose meticulousness affected his family in life does so even from the grave.

   These stories arc more human than Forsyth’s novels, the characters more memorable as people, rather than technicians, and the tension runs just as high as in the author’s longer works.

     ———
   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.

Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:         

   

BACK FROM THE DEAD. Twentieth Century Fox, 1957. Peggie Castle, Arthur Franz, Marsha Hunt, Don Haggerty. Director: Charles Marquis Warren.

   Don’t let the title of this Gothic misfire fool you. Back from the Dead is, despite its title, an altogether lifeless affair that plods along without much in the way of visceral horror or even suspense. Set in Carmel on the California coast (although filmed in Laguna) with a coterie of presumably Old Money types, the movie features Peggie Castle as a woman who becomes possessed with the spirit of her husband’s ex-wife, Felicia.

   The husband, Dick Anthony (Arthur Franz), doesn’t know what’s going on, so he enlists the help of his sister-in-law Kate (Marsha Hunt) to investigate. This leads them to Felicia’s parents who are, or were, part of some black magic cult. And apparently it was Felicia who got them into it. You see: there is a Satanic mystic guru living in the area who is able to get young women under his spell, and she at one point fell under his control.

   It was probably all very intriguing on paper. The problem is that the movie has such a lack of style that what could have worked, doesn’t. The movie isn’t scary or salacious; it’s overall rather dull, despite the cast taking the material seriously.

   There is one scene though – and it’s in the beginning of the movie – which is truly captivating. The viewer sees two people, a man and a woman in cloaks, throwing a body into the water. It’s chilling and reminded me of the Val Lewton horror films of the 1940s.

   Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. Overall, a disappointment. But there’s enough in the source material that it could work as a remake someday.

   

   

   Yes, I know it’s a few hours early in the part of the world where I live, but perhaps not yours. In any case, it’s late enough here to be New Year’s Eve, which is still a very good time for both Jonathan and I to wish everyone all of the best for 2025!

Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:         

   

ALASKA SEAS. Paramount Pictures, 1954. Robert Ryan, Jan Sterling, Brian Keith, Gene Barry. Screenwriters: Walter Doniger & Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes). Director: Jerry Hopper.

   Directed by Jerry Hopper, this mediocre remake of the box office hit Spawn of the North (1938) is about rustling. Just not cattle. Here, it’s salmon that’s been rustled by rival fishermen. Ryan stars as Matt Kelly, a rugged ruffian who, when released from jail for poaching, returns to his small fishing village in hopes of getting back into the salmon trade.

   Little does he know how much has changed since he left. Not only has the government changed the regulations regarding fishing, but his close friend Jim (Brian Keith) is now engaged to his love interest Nikki (Jan Sterling). Complicating matters further in this tiny outpost is the criminally minded Verne Williams (Gene Barry) who makes Kelly a tempting offer to get involved in the illicit salmon business.

   In terms of direction and narrative, it’s all very pedestrian from beginning to end. There are some good moments, but overall there is not a lot of energy here Even though with a cast as good as this one, there really should be. One last thing. If you’ve ever wanted to see Robert Ryan interact with a trained seal in a bathtub, then Alaska Seas might just be the motion picture you’re looking for.

   Verdict: great cast, including Timothy Carey in a supporting role, but a somewhat flat story that you’ve seen in westerns sundry times before done with much greater effect.

   

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Problem of the Covered Bridge.” Dr. Sam Hawthorne #1. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1974. Collected in Diagnosis Impossible (Crippen & Landru, 1996).

   One of the late Mr. Hoch’s various series characters, and perhaps the most loved, is Dr. Sam Hawthorne, whose adventures take place over the years in a small town in upstate New York. Told chronologically, beginning in the year 1922, when Sam was still brand new on the job, the series gives his readers a long picturesque slice of the history of American life and culture as it could have happened — and should have!

   That’s above and beyond the stories themselves, of course, all of them, as far as I know, “impossible crimes” and locked room mysteries. I haven’t taken the time I need to be able to tell you how many stories in the series there are, and I apologize for that, but roughly speaking, there are perhaps 50 of them, possibly more. All of them have been collected, in order, by Crippen & Landru.

   The puzzle in this, the first of them, is an audacious one. A cart is pulled by a horse into a covered bridge but never comes out the other side. Tracks in the mud and snow on the opposite side, or rather, the lack of them, make for a truly puzzling mystery – a “wow” factor of ten out of ten, no doubt about it.

   The solution, and do I hate to say this, is too complicated for its own good. But then again, it really would have to be, wouldn’t it? Hoch tells his tale in his own unique simplistic (but never simple) style, giving extra dimensions to his characters that another writer might not have. Which is not to say that the clues to the story are not there. They are. Every single one.

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

CROSS-UP, aka TIGER BY THE TAIL. Eros Films, UK, 1954. Larry Parks, Constance Smith, Lisa Daniely, Cyril Chamberlai, Thora Hird. Screenplay by John Gilling and Willis Goldbeck, based on the novel Never Come Back, by John Mair. Directed by John Gilling.

   American reporter John Desmond (Larry Parks) meets attractive Anna Ray (Lia Daniely) soon after arriving in London and is instantly attracted to her, but no sooner than they are alone together than she argues with him, pulls a gun and tries to kill him, and in the ensuing struggle, he kills her.

   Desmond is rightfully concerned no one would believe him, and being a stranger in London, he thinks he might get away with just fading into the woodwork, but he soon discovers he didn’t go unobserved and he is being stalked not only by the police, but by a mysterious criminal organization that Ray worked for.

   Along with beautiful Jane Claymore (Constance Smith) Desmond is on the run and some of the sprightly dialogue has the snap of North by Northwest between them if nothing else comes up to that level. I don’t want to oversell it, but it is pretty good for a quota quickie, moves well, and Parks and Smith make an attractive film team.

   In fact the only real problem with Cross-Up is that until 1990 (a faithful made for television film) it was the only film version of John Mair’s early War novel Never Come Back, an innovative and entertaining thriller of the pre-War era that ended up being the only novel by a young literary writer who died shortly in an RAF accident.

   In Mair’s novel the hero is an anti-hero, if there ever was one, who seduces a young woman who becomes overly enamored of him leading him to murder her, only to discover she was tied up with a spy organization that he ends up infiltrating and destroying, recruited as a secret agent and now a hero or at least useful fellow despite of the fact he is a murderer or maybe because of it.

   Aside from the modern plot, the writing in the book is extraordinary making Mair’s loss all the more a tragedy.

   Cross-Up is an entertaining if minor variation on Mair’s novel with an attractive cast and certainly Gilling is a work horse director (Mother Reilly and the Vampire, The Pirates of Blood River) and screenwriter whose name has come up here on more than one film.

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