DIE, MONSTER, DIE! American International, 1965. Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson, Suzan Farmer, Terence de Marney, Patrick Magee. Screenplay: Jerry Sohl, based on the story “The Colour Out of Space” by H. P. Lovecraft. Director: Daniel Haller.

   An admirable attempt to adapt to film what might have been Lovecraft’s closest attempt to wrote science fiction. Admirable, since there’s much to like, especially in the first half, but doomed to failure when they tried to make a monster movie out of it, rather the a study of the not very beneficial effects a radioactive object landing from space has on all the surrounding terrain.

   For some reason the movie was filmed in England, and so naturally they moved the story there as well, rather than (I believe) somewhere in austere New England. At least they called the nearby village Arkham. Nick Adams plays the boy friend of Susan Witley (Suzann Farmer), whom he met in college back in the states. Boris Karloff plays her father, intimidating even in a wheelchair, and orders young Stephen Reinhart off the premises.

   He refuses, of course, but even stepping off the train, he knows that not all is well with the Witley family. All of the village fold shun him immediately they know his destination. Susan’s mother is not well, the one servant is on his last legs, and old Nahum Witley has secrets he will not tell, including what caused the large pit just down the drive from the manor house, and the totally blighted area around it.

   The first half of the movie is extremely well done, beautifully photographed and the old mansion filled with all the accouterments an old family mansion should have. With hints galore, of course, that there are secrets here that man, perhaps, is not meant to know.

   So of course when the secrets are so slight, and the telling so indifferently done, the second half can hardly live up the billing. If some of the details of the the history of the house and those who have lived in it had been set out more precisely, it would have helped. But the even the title of film promises a monster, and when all we get is a few momentary chills and a display of what happens in the end to old Nahum Witley, shaggy eyebrows and all, there isn’t anything left to do but wish that a stronger hand had been on the controls.

WILLIAM SAMBROT “Island of Fear.” Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, 18 January 1958. Reprinted in Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories (Pocket, paperback, May 1963).

   William Sambrot (1920-2007) wrote and published over 50 science fiction stories. Many of them first appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, not the most traditional market for speculative fiction, but the place where he found a home. He also wrote for such publications as Playboy and Blue Book Magazine. Fourteen of his short stories were reprinted in Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories.

   The short story “Island of Fear,” is a suspenseful yarn about a man obsessed with a wall built on a Greek isle. He wants – no, he needs to know who built this wall and why. This is especially so given the fact that on the other side of this wall there appears to be a beautiful sculpture, one that has escaped the attention of the art books.

   As a tale that is both atmospheric and suspenseful, “Island of Fear” isn’t so much a science fiction story as it is a horror story. It’s actually a pretty good read, yet because it’s a rather short, I’d be giving away too much if I tried to tell you too much more about the plot. Let’s just say the Greek setting is what propels the story forward, with rising tension, toward a horrific climax.

   So as I ask you as readers of speculative fiction: have you ever read Sambrot’s work? Do you remember it when his fiction was first published in The Saturday Evening Post? Do you have a favorite story of his? If so, leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

ROBERT BLOCH – There Is a Serpent in Eden. Zebra, paperback original, 1979. Reprinted by Zebra as The Cunning, paperback, 1981.

   This finds the author of Psycho in John D. MacDonald territory, and not very happy about it.

   â€œEden” is a retirement community in California, but it reads a lot like MacDonald’s Florida: plenty of sun, money, and drama in the lives of the aging residents, a half-dozen of whom are unknowingly heading for a crisis that will redefine their lives, much in the manner of All These Condemned — or for that matter, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

   Bloch sets up the characters and their hang-ups with color and economy: Warren, contemplating suicide; Joe, trying to look like his neighbors and keep his background a secret; Lulu and Homer, just off the farm and uncomfortable in a suburban environment… and each of them, in his or her own way, dealing with old age. We get the sagging nympho, the restless retired cop, the dying man, and the old woman suffering from dementia — and we get Mick, the nasty young caterer planning to rob all these geezers at gunpoint.

   Mick’s enterprise pushes Serpent close to caper-novel territory, but mostly Bloch stays with the suicidal Warren as he looks about him and finds no reason to live. Which gives the author plenty of time to ruminate on society in the late 1970s and wonder where it all went wrong.

   Now I’ll grant you, the late 1970s were hardly the high point of western civilization (that was the late 1960s!) but Warren (or the author) seem unduly harsh to me.

   When this was published, Robert Bloch was in his early 60s, which I like to think of now as the beginnings of approaching pre-middle-age. Seriously though, it’s a time when some folks reflect on days gone by and on their own mortality. But coming from Bloch, the philosophizing is laced with puns and word-play, and the effect is like Travis McGee doing stand-up.

   Somehow the story gets so wrapped up in itself that it’s not until page 218 that anybody gets a knife in the chest — totally unlike Bloch to string the reader along like that, and that’s my only problem with Serpent; when I pick up a Robert Bloch book, I expect some gruesome mystery, a few chills and maybe a ghoul or two. What I get here is Drama. Well done — the robbery and its unraveling is particularly tense and exciting, when we finally get to it — but not the bloody, lurid thing I was looking forward to.

ROBERT COLBY – Secret of the Second Door. Gold Medal #855, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1959. Wildside Press, softcover, 2002. Prologue Books, softcover, 2013. TV Adapation: An episode of Hawaiian Eye, 9 December 1959 (season 1, episode 10; same title).

   Of the seventeen paperback originals Robert Colby wrote under his own name in the 50s, 60s and and early 70s, five were published by Gold Medal, five by Monarch, four by Ace, two from Avon, and one from Pyramid. (He also paired up to write one of the Nick Carter books done by Award in 1972.) Given my opinion of the quality of books from these publishers, to me this suggests that his career was more a case of wide variability rather than versatility.

   It’s the first by Colby that I’ve read from any publisher, though, so I know that until I read more, a statement such as the one above should be taken with a grain of salt, maybe even two.

   As for the book at hand, however, I was moderately disappointed. It starts out just fine. A guy running an apartment complex in Florida gets an anonymous clipping in the mail, telling him that the husband of his ex-flame in New York City has just died, under rather unusual circumstances.

   Does he go running off to see her? He’s carrying a torch that he can barely lift over his head. You bet he does. It turns out that before he died in an automobile accident the dead man had come home from he said was a poker game with a suitcase filled with exactly $200,000 which is now missing.

   It doesn’t sound like the winnings at a poker game, the former girlfriend says. Between seeing the lady again and the promise of a share of the loot to boot, Neil Shepherd agrees to help her.

   So far, so good, but the book goes off in its own direction, as Shepherd has his mind filled with thoughts of the money than he does the lady, which is why he showed up in Manhattan in the first place. And of course the real owners of the $200,000 want their say in the matter, not to mention the lady friend, who has secrets of her own.

   But instead of a bunch of clever guys, they turn out to be no more than gang of stupid, vicious thugs, and a whole lot of stupid, vicious things happen in the second half of the book, which is otherwise pretty much a letdown. Worse, several key points of the plot creak worse than any badly oiled door you ever heard, including on the radio.

   Well, maybe more than moderately disappointing.

   I’m not exactly sure how the title fits in. It may be figurative, that Shepherd is given a second chance with the lady friend. But as that aspect of the story doesn’t pan out the way I thought it would, there are a couple of real-life doors that figure into the tale, briefly but significantly, one more than the other.

A. E. MARTIN – The Outsiders. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1945. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition. Mercury Mystery #116, digest-sized paperback, no date stated. First published in Australia by Consolidated, hardcover, 1944, as The Common People. Film: Hammer, 1955, as The Glass Cage; released in the US as The Glass Tomb.

   This is the first of, I believe, two Pel Pelham novels. Pelham is a “spruiker”, or barker, for various sideshow attractions. In this novel, he is working with Henri Sapolio, the World’s Champion Faster, who is going to attempt to break his record of not eating for 65 straight days.

   A young lady is murdered in the apartment house where Sapolio lives. As she is being murdered, Pelham and some of his friends, including an armless woman, a midget, a tattooed lady — well, really stenciled — and a Chinese giant, are partying at Sapolio’s the day before he is to begin his record fast.

   The murdered woman is a former aerialist in the circus whose father gave Pelham his first job. She also may or may not be mixed up in blackmail, particularly of a special friend of Pelham’s who grew up with him in an orphanage.

   Pelham has to get the fasting show started, deal with a cop who loathes “freaks,” and figure out who the killer is in an excellent novel that is also a very good mystery.

Bibliographic Notes:   In something of a footnote, Bill added that the book takes place in Australia, probably Sydney, not England, as Al Hubin had it in error at the time. The second Pel Pelham novel that Bill referred to is The Bridal Bed Murders (Simon & Schuster, 1953).

Alto saxophonist and flutist Frank Strozier made only a few LPs in his career. Two of them have recently been combined on one CD: Long Night (1961) and March of the Siamese Children (1962). The first of these LPs has been posted in its entirety on YouTube. Most of Strozier’s work was as a sideman for other bands: Don Ellis, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne and others.

Alto Saxophone – Frank Strozier
Tenor Saxophone – George Coleman
Baritone Saxophone – Pat Patrick
Piano – Chris Anderson
Bass – Bill Lee
Drums – Walter Perkins

0:00 Long Night
4:35 How Little We Know
10:33 The Need For Love
15:15 The Man That Got Away
19:34 Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe
25:32 The Crystal Ball
31:06 Peacemaker
35:12 Just Think It Over

THE CANARY MURDER CASE. 1929. William Powell, Louise Brooks, James Hall, Jean Arthur, Eugene Pallette. Screenplay by Florence Ryerson. Titles by Herman J. Mankiewitz. Story and Dialogue by S.S. Van Dine (his novel uncredited). Directed by Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle (the latter uncredited for filming scenes for the sound version).

LA CANARINA ASSASSINATA. Episodes 3 and 4 of Philo Vance, Italy, 10 & 14 September 1974. Giorgio Albertazzi, Stefania Cossini, Giovanni Guerrieri Teleplay by Biagio Proiretti and Belisarrio L. Randone, based on the novel The Canary Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine. Directed by Marco Leto.

   Ogden Nash’s well deserved kick in the pants aside, Philo Vance dominated the American detective story in the Golden Age as an influence on such stellar sleuths as Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe, to name two, from the school founded by Wilfrid Huntington Wright writing as S. S. Van Dine. It was only natural he was one of the first fictional American sleuths to find his way to the big screen when talking pictures made the traditional Golden Age mystery a Hollywood staple. (Craig Kennedy was one who beat him to the screen, thanks to Arthur Reeve’s involvement in early serials.)

   Veteran silent screen villain William Powell (he was loathsome as the blackmailing stool pigeon Italian Legionaire in the Ronald Colman version of Beau Geste) was Vance on screen, erudite, charming, and suave, with a human side the novels never gave Van Dine’s hero. In The Canary Murder, an early talkie, Vance is involved when Margaret O’Dell (Louise Brooks), the Canary of the title, a nightclub entertainer and serial blackmailer and twenties style vampire is murdered in her flat. There are multiple suspects, including the son of one of Vance’s close friends (James Hall), and Vance is drawn into the case by District Attorney Markham, to the annoyance of veteran homicide detective Sgt. Heath (Eugene Pallette). Powell’s compassion as Vance is as much in the forefront as is intelligence and elegance, a quality that is intellectual and aloof in the novels but human in Powell’s hands.

   Canary was the second Vance outing for Powell (he appeared earlier that same year in The Greene Murder Case, mentioned in this film in passing), and he comes to it assured and natural on screen despite the drawbacks of early sound. Most of the flaws of early sound films are noticeable here, but what is also notable is how at ease Powell, Pallette, and ingenue Jean Arthur are despite the difficulties. You never see them playing to the mike, which is more than can be said for anyone else in the movie. The other actors enunciate painfully, stumble, and otherwise make it evident how hard they are constraining themselves to stay in range of the primitive stationary microphones, and how poor their skills at learning dialogue are.

   One black actor playing the nightman at the apartment where the Canary is murdered is given a painfully drawn out and racially offensive stutter that make his scenes actually unpleasant to watch, aggravated by the fact he is struggling both with the microphone and remembering dialogue (not unique to him, of the actors in this film only Powell, Pallette, and Arthur seem to have any concept of learning dialogue).

   You will find yourself wishing for the ease and comfort on screen of Stepin Fetchit, Mantan Moreland, or Willie Best, and how much grace and skill they brought to these scenes. This is doubly ironic since in print the Van Dine school of the detective story was noted for its tolerance and racial sensitivity.

   Cult actress Louise Brooks has a terribly thankless role as the victim though the novel is rewritten to give her more screen time (in the book she is dead at the beginning). She is dubbed, and badly, by a Bronx accented actress, and there is little attempt to sync her lips with the voice. She mostly speaks with the back of her head turned to the screen or off screen while the camera lingers on her beauty when she is silent. The silent era style still evident in early talkies is most evident when she is on screen. Luckily for her, and for us, she still possesses a translucent beauty even then. It is hard not to watch her even with her back to the camera.

   The highlight of the film is a poker game where Vance hopes to trap the killer by recognizing the psychology of the murderer. In yet another deviation from the novel the killer dies before he can confess and Vance has to detect how the crime was done to free an innocent man who has confessed to protect another. Even Van Dine, who provided the screen story and dialogue, seemed to realize his coldly intellectual ubermensch would be a bit much on screen and seems to have approved of the various attempts to humanize him on screen even doing so himself in The Gracie Allen Murder Case.

   The clue that the mystery turns on is fairly famous and well known, but if anyone wants to know it, we can cover it in the comments section to save any red flags. It is far from fair play in the film, and though Vance explains how he spotted it, the viewer has no chance to do so. We are shown afterword what the actual clue was, but there is no way the viewer could have spotted or understood it. This is not really a variation from Van Dine, whose clues could involve specialized knowledge of such subjects as the properties of heavy water, the works of Goethe adapted to opera, higher mathematics, Egyptology, modern art, and modern German criminology.

   The film, like Greene before it, and unlike many early talkies, has a few stylistic touches from the German expressionist school of film making, including a nice number with Brooks swinging high above her audience and flirting with her lovers in the audience below. I am going to assume that and other such touches were the work of Frank Tuttle, since I don’t know credited director Malcolm St. Clair’s work. Hopefully if I am wrong someone will set me straight.

   While far from a masterpiece, this is a good film worth seeing for more than its historical import. If nothing else it is worth seeing how natural Powell was speaking on screen at this early date, a rare role for the legendary Brooks, and a young but already assured Jean Arthur.

   La canaria assassinata (the lack of capitals is European style) adapts the Van Dine book in two parts for Italian television and first aired in September 1974. Very much in the style of the Ian Carmichael-Lord Peter Wimsey adaptations, this black and white production is not only faithful to Van Dine, but also handsomely done with Art Decco sets and twenties style clothing.

   Giorgio Albertazzi is Vance, and the closest to Van Dine’s creation yet on screen, every inch the monocled, ’g dropping, Nordic superman described by his creator. If he lacks Powell’s charm (and almost everyone does), Albertazzi is much closer physically and psychologically than Powell to Van Dine’s creation. If you ever wanted to see Vance done on screen as he was in the books this is your chance.

   The actors here are attractive and smart, and while there is no dubbing or subtitles available, anyone who has read the book will have little trouble following this. Ironically this and The Greene Murder Case of both the Italian and the Powell series from Paramount are available on YouTube to compare.

   The Italian series of Philo Vance stories is every bit as faithful and attractive as the sixties Italian Nero Wolfe series that is also available on YouTube for lovers of Rex Stout’s rotund sleuth. Both show a fealty to the original works that is seldom seen in American television, and frankly more faithful to the written word than many of the British adaptations of Agatha Christie and others.

   When the hardboiled school took the forefront in American mystery fiction, Van Dine and Vance bore the brunt of the criticism, and the reaction against the clearly artificial school of mystery fiction mostly settled on their shoulders, fairly or not. Vance and his creator became the face of that school of the Golden Age of the detective story, and only Ellery Queen and Rex Stout truly survived the sea change, thanks to EQ’s evolution as a character and the hard boiled voice of Archie Goodwin and wit of Rex Stout.

   By the post-war era, they were the only survivors of the sea change, and Van Dine was out of print from the forties until the sixties and then available only sporadically until the Fawcett paperback series (the same thing happened to Dorothy Sayers, the British writer closest to Van Dine in some ways).

   Truth be told, by the time of the later Vance books, Van Dine and his creation were showing signs of growing weary and the Vance books formula had become too obvious. Still, in his time Philo Vance was the face of the American mystery, popular on film and radio and a subject of satire even in Will Gould’s comic strip Red Barry, where Gould’s tough undercover tec often shows up an amateur clearly based on Vance, something that needed no explanation to readers.

   The Canary Murder Case and La canarina assassinata are two handsome adaptations of Van Dine to the big and small screen and tributes to the popularity of Philo Vance. Whatever the flaws of Van Dine, the school of mystery he founded, or Philo Vance as a character, they are old friends to me, and I always enjoy revisiting them, especially when done as well as they are here.

Released earlier by The Misfits as a single, this version appears on their 2003 CD, Project 1950:

  LEONARD LUPTON – Murder Without Tears. Graphic #149, paperback original; 1st printing, 1957. Cover art by Roy Lance.

   I don’t know why I should be the one to bring this up, but some of you who’ve been following this blog for a while now just might remember a pledge I made toward the beginning of the year,something along the lines of my reading more Gold Medal paperbacks in 2015, and reporting back on them here.

   I didn’t get to far with that idea, did I? I’m sorry, and I apologize. Here it is the end of September, though, and I think there’s still time to redeem myself. Or in other words, I’m aware of the problem, and I’m working on it.

   That I’m reviewing this book by Leonard Lupton means I’m getting close, but I’m not there yet. Graphic Books published a lot of hard-boiled crime and detective material in the short period of time they were around, but I’ve always gotten the sense that in terms of their paperback originals, they and Ace got what Gold Medal turned down.

   There isn’t a lot of new ground that ends up being covered in Murder Without Tears, but after an opening that’s slow to get started, the rest of the early going has its moments. After the War (Korea) Jason Broome came back to his home town, determined to make good. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, figuratively speaking, he now owns a home on the heights above the river that once belonged to the man who owned the plant where Broome’s father worked for most of his life.

   Problem is, it’s been turned into a gin mill. A high-toned gin mill, but still a dive, at least in some people’s minds. Enter the girl. Anne Cramer grew up playing with the daughter of the man who used to own the house, but once they’ve met, she and Jason seem to get along fine. A friend of her father’s comes to Jason and tells him to leave it off with Anne.

   And he ends up dead. Coming to Jason’s rescue is Anne. They spent the night together, she says. Jason is relieved, but he soon realizes that Anne has provided herself a nice alibi as well.

   So far, so good, but while the story doesn’t go downhill, exactly, it sort of stagnates from here. It’s told by someone who knows his way around words, though, making me wonder why this is the only story like this Leonard Lupton wrote under his own name. (He wrote a half an Ace Double as by Chester Warwick, and eight romantic suspense novels in the 80s as by Mary Lupton.)