JOHN RECTOR – The Cold Kiss. Forge, hardcover, July 2010; paperback, May 2011.

   This one reminded me in a good many ways of the Gold Medal paperbarks of the 1950s and early 60s, only brought up to date in (to me) a not entirely satisfactory fashion. It begins just fine, with Nate and Sara (not married) picking up a stranger while on the road from Minnesota to Reno.

   The stranger appears ill, or they wouldn’t have picked him up. What they didn’t expect was that he would die on them. Or that when they look in his suitcase they find two million dollars in cash. What do they do? What would you do?

   Especially when they’re stranded in a motel along the highway in a blizzard, with phone lines down, the electricity out (there is gas heat) and no way to contact the authorities, even if they wanted to.

   There are other refugees from the storm stranded there, totally isolated from the outside world. The owner of the motel seems strange but OK. The owner’s nephew seems only strange. As things develop, it turns out that Nate has a criminal record and Sara is pregnant. There is more, but why should I tell you everything?

   Reston has a smooth tight way of telling the story, and the first half is a doozy. There was one point around two in the morning when I simply had to shut the book down for the night, so intense it was.

   I was OK with the ending, but some of the reviewers on Amazon weren’t, a minority, to be sure, and yet I’m not so sure that they might not be right. But what makes this book not a keeper for me, though, is not the ending so much, but rather that — given this absolutely top notch and A-One firing-on-all-cylinders beginning — there is a point beyond which the tone of the book changes, giving what most neo-noir readers seem to want, if not relish, in their reading material today.

   You may wish me to say more, but I won’t, other than to add that I’m old-fashioned. I’m happier with the sort of on-the-edge-of-the-chair suspense that’s created by an author like Cornell Woolrich, say, a writer who fills your mind with images of your own making, rather than one who brings them to life in vivid reality, so to speak, even though Rector may be the better writer.

   Please don’t take this as a warning to not read the book. This book may be exactly what you’re looking for, and if you didn’t know about it before, then my job is done.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. BBC Radio 4, 25 July 2015. Toby Stephens as James Bond, John Standing as M, Lisa Dillon as Tiffany Case, and Martin Jarvis as Ian Fleming. Dramatized by Archie Scotney, based on the novel by Ian Fleming. Directed by Martin Jarvis. Available online for the next two weeks on BBC 4 Extra. Earlier adaptations of the Bond novels are available in full form on YouTube.

   So far the BBC have adapted Dr. No, You Only Live Twice (Michael Jayston as Bond), Goldfinger (with Ian McKellan as Goldfinger), From Russia with Love, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Alfred Molina as Blofield) in 90 minute adaptations of the novels. Of course much gets left out, but these are dead on and not too slavish. Diamonds opens by using a scene cutting technique letting us in on Bond’s assignment while at the same time using Fleming’s evocative opening chapter from the novel.

   Most of the adaptations open with Fleming telling the story and then become straight radio adaptation.

   Listening to this one the thing that stands out for me is that, dated as it is, Fleming manages to write as good a horse-racing thriller and Vegas novel as most I have read, with much more detail and background than most. His skill as both journalist and spy shows in these details that often have the authentic feel of well written intelligence reports (it is no accident many spies become writers, one of the skills is communication).

   That feeling of being in on something you shouldn’t be hearing is as important to the Bond novels as the sex, sadism, and snobbery, and the Saturday morning serial plots. The Fleming Effect, as it is known, works even on radio.

   If your favorite Bond novel got short changed by the film series in terms of things you wanted to see (Diamonds certainly did) this is the authentic Bond and Toby Stephens is excellent playing Bond as more a man and less an icon. It is a fine dramatic performance and not merely a reading with Stephens ably managing to let us know when we are hearing Bond’s thoughts and not spoken dialogue by a mere change of tone. Fleming’s voice intrudes only when absolutely needed.

   It may also remind you that the best of Fleming lay in his ability to write prose that kept readers turning pages. These adaptations show just how well Fleming could do that even without pounding music scores, over size sets and set pieces, beautiful scantily clad women, and iconic actors.

   I won’t get into the plot. I’ll just point out the full cast radio dramatization gets it right. If you enjoy radio drama these run just under ninety minutes and are fast paced and well done. They are an improvement over the many readings of the novels available in audiobook form.

The last couple days I’ve been thinking about PulpFest which will be held August 13 through 16, 2015, in Columbus Ohio. That’s this Thursday coming up! I’ve been deluged by logical and sane looking collectors and non-collectors all asking me the same question. Why bother attending PulpFest? They have shown up at my house; they have called me on the telephone; they have sent me emails.

Enough is enough! Here’s a list of excuses for not attending that I hear all the time, and why none of them are good ones:

1–I have no money! Sorry but I’ve attended many a Pulpcon in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s and I went with very little money. Are there no credit cards? Are there no credit unions? Are there no non-collecting spouses to borrow money from?

Even when I had the money, I often blew it before the convention by visiting local bookstores like Bonnett’s and Dragon’s Lair in Dayton, Ohio. If not in the bookstores, then in the hotel rooms of friends who let me see what they were bringing to sell. I learned to go without much cash but I brought a few boxes of pulps to trade and sell at my table.

2–I’m in poor health and too sick to attend. Sorry again! I had a friend who had a terminal illness and came to Pulpcon anyway. Another friend actually collapsed at the convention and died soon after. I myself once threw my back out three days before the show and my doctor and chiropractor both told me to forget making the long drive to the convention.

I felt like I was crippled for life but I managed to squeeze into the car and drive out even though I had to stop numerous times near hotels because I thought I was not going to make it. I could then rent a room and lay there for a couple weeks until I could stand. It took me 16 hours instead of the usual 9 hours but I made it. I spent the entire convention standing because sitting down caused back spasms.

3–I have no space or I live in a small apartment. Collectors always make space for the things they love! When I first crossed the threshold of Bob Lesser’s home in the 1970’s, I found myself immersed in a world where his collection and architectural home styles met. His NYC apartment, although compact, was ingeniously organized—a testament to maximizing small spaces in a city known for its diverse dwelling designs. A path led from the front door to the bed and another to the bathroom, with every other inch occupied by toys, robots, and paintings, all coexisting with the character of his unique urban habitat.

I once ran out of space and I hunted for over a year until I found a bigger house. I went to dozens of open houses and looked at hundreds of houses. I finally found a big house. Unfortunately I soon filled it up with books and now I need a bigger place! The old story…

4–My wife is a non-collector and forbids me to go. Tell me about it! I’ve been married over 40 years and I’ve heard it all. I still go and I still collect. Once Les Mayer told me in 1990 at Wayne, NJ that his wife thought he was a business meeting. If she knew he was at a Pulpcon she might burn his pulps.

Collectors have to become masters of deception and great liars to defeat the non-collector. Many a time I’ve lied and many a time I’ve smuggled books into the house in the dead of night while “she who must be obeyed” slept the innocent sleep of the non-collector. Non-collectors exist to be ignored…

5–I can’t get off from work. Sorry but not a valid reason. My employers always knew I was a rabid book collector who always without exception took off a week during Pulpcon in the summer. I made sure that my vacation request was in as early as I knew the convention dates.

Once they sorrowfully told me I couldn’t go because of some work bullshit. I went anyway and left it to them to ignore my absence without leave or put up with one pissed off book collector. I realize the employment situation is different nowadays but which is more important, your job or your collection, your marriage or your collection? Right, your collection.

6–Who cares about the convention. I can buy my pulps off ebay, etc. Once in the 1920’s and 1930’s the dime novel collectors existed. But they didn’t have a convention and died off. Now I know of only a few in existence and dime novels are just about worthless. If I had a table full of dime novels priced at a buck apiece, most collectors would scurry by in disgust.

We have to support the two big pulp conventions: Windy City in Chicago and PulpFest in Columbus. If we don’t, then one day we will wake up and the pulps might be dead. These shows garner a lot of attention and people keep talking about the pulps because of the efforts of Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, Doug Ellis, John Gunnison, and others.

7–And finally the best reason for attending! They are a hell of a lot of fun. Not only do you get to roam around a gigantic dealer’s room full of books and pulps but you get to meet and talk to some of the greatest collectors and dealers.

These will lead to future deals and contacts. Plus you can eat and drink with these guys! Though I seem to be one of last of the drinkers. And the panels! All day and all night we will be discussing pulps and books. What’s cooler than that?

8–Walker, it’s too late! Like hell. There are hotels with rooms available nearby. What’s the most important thing in a serious collector’s life? His collection without a doubt.

We work, we slave, we march on to the bitter end where we will eat dirt in the boneyard. We live lives of quiet desperation and worry about the afterlife. Go to PulpFest and collect some books and pulps! You only live once…

“Galahad.” An episode of Front Page Detective, Dumont, 1951-53. Actual date of this episode unknown, perhaps the pilot for the series. Edmund Lowe, with (possibly) Emory Parnell, Frank Jenks, Helen Brown, John Phillips.

   The only member of the cast that I recognized, other than Edmund Lowe, was Frank Jenks. The credits were clipped on the DVD I watched this from, so I’m relying on IMDb until proven otherwise.

   I have no idea what persuaded Lowe to come out of a long hiatus from movie-making to star in this bare-bones budget of a TV series. Between 1945 and this series, he was in one movie in 1948 and nothing more. It is possible that the show I watched was trimmed here and there. Quite often the transitions between scenes seemed to skip over parts of the story.

   Which may have been a good one. It is hard to tell from what I saw of it. Lowe plays a newspaper reporter named David Chase in this series, and in this episode he gets mixed up with an heiress who wishes to marry the brother of her deceased husband, against the wishes of the rest of his family, and a former photographer for Chase’s paper who has blackmail on his mind.

   The rest is a muddle, and a mystery to me, though not the one they intended, I’m sure.

Note:   Mike Nevins had more to say about the series itself in his column for this blog back in September 2012.

THE HOUSE OF FEAR. Universal, 1945. Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Aubrey Mather, Dennis Hoey, Paul Cavanagh, Holmes Herbert, Harry Cording, Sally Shepherd. Screenplay: Roy Chanslor, based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Director: Roy William Neill.

   Yet another in the superior “B” series produced and directed by Roy William Neill, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. This one — very loosely based on “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips” — offers a disparate group of bachelors sharing their fortunes at a remote Old Dark House somewhere on the Gothic Coast of England until they start getting murdered one by one, their gruesome demises presaged by anonymous missives filled with orange seeds.

   Purists at the time complained loudly about this — Watson actually solves the case before Holmes does — but I found it charming, with the skillful interplay of the leads set neatly off once again by Neill’s off-noir lighting and intelligent pace.

GEORGE C. CHESBRO – Dark Chant in a Crimson Key. Mongo the Dwarf #11. Mysterious Press, hardcover, April 1992; paperback, May 1993.

   Och, Mongo, ah harrdly knew ye. This is the eleventh book about Dr. Bob Frederickson, aka Mongo the Dwarf, his brother Garth, and other assorted characters who pop up now and again. I’m not going to keep you in suspense: it’s not much. Chesbro’s tales of the dwarf detective just keep getting sillier and sillier.

   Mongo is hired by a philanthropic foundation to go to Switzerland and report on a recent swindle that’s cost them 10 mil. The criminal is reported to be John Sinclair, aka “Chant,” (a character in three books written by Chesbro as [a villain] who is supposedly hemmed up in Switzerland by a police net).

   Chant is (oh, yes) the ultimate ninja. Mongo is warned by various agencies and individuals (including his own version of Robert E. Parker’s Hawk, Veil Kendry) to stay out of it all, but doesn’t, natch. There are secret Oriental societies, deadly drugs, mystic rites, torture, and more, more, more! It’s a bummer, folks. Really. Bad stuff.

   The sad thing is that Chesbro can be and has been a very capable writer. There was room in the field for a different sort of PI, one who handled cases that slanted a tad toward the unbelievable, and in the first few books Mongo and brother Garth were both enjoyable and not too far removed from reality for some of us to relate to.

   No longer the case, I’m afraid. I don’t know how you’d classify the series now; I guess, he said reluctantly, as unreadable. ’bye, Mongo. ’bye, George.

GEMINI MAN. Made-for-TV movie. NBC, 2 hours, 10 May 1976. Pilot for the series which began the following fall. Ben Murphy, Katherine Crawford, Richard Dysart, Dana Elcar, Paul Shenar. Based on the novel The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells. Director: Alan J. Levi.

   I must not have been paying attention to the opening credits, otherwise I would have known a lot more about what to expect of this pilot film when I started watching — or perhaps H. G. Wells wasn’t mentioned. I haven’t gone back to look, but I will. (Later: The reason I didn’t remember the credits is that they are at the end of the film, and even more, no, H. G. Wells is not mentioned.)

   The phenomenon of invisibility has been around in fiction for a log time, including both TV and the movies, whether it’s physically possible or not, and Gemini Man is yet another attempt.

   Ben Murphy plays Sam Casey in both the pilot and the series that came afterward. Casey is an easy-going secret agent who’s caught in an underwater explosion while he’s examining a secret Russian satellite that has come down from orbit and landed in the Pacific. It is in the aftermath of the explosion that he discovers he has new powers.

   The only drawback? He can stay invisible only 15 minutes a day, added up cumulatively over the 24-hour period. This is a necessary plot device, since otherwise, of course, he’s Superman without the Kryponite.

   It was difficult to watch this and see Dana Elcar as the villain, working secretly for the Russian government, but so he is. Nor am I revealing anything to you you won’t know with he first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie. Unfortunately this is about all there is to know about the plot. The rest consists of jokey references to Sam’s new ability, cars driving here and there, and a serious attempt at misadventure aboard an airplane in the sky.

   I haven’t checked to see what shows that Gemini Man, the series, was up against in the fall, but of the eleven episodes filmed, only five of them were ever aired. Neither Ben Murphy nor Katherine Crawford (as scientist Dr. Abby Lawrence, also Sam’s mentor) have enough charisma to overcome what I imagine were some rather ordinary stories.

   All of the shows filmed do exist, and are available on collector-to-collector DVDs, but all in all, I don’t think I’ll pony up the $25 asking price for a set I discovered online in pristine picture quality.

DANIEL SILVA – The Rembrandt Affair. Putnam, hardcover, July 2010. Signet, paperback, July 2011.

   There is no question Daniel Silva’s spy novels featuring ex-Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon are among the best written and most literate thrillers written today. The world Silva creates is both deeply realized and vividly portrayed and he orchestrates suspense and action as well as any major spy writer in a generation.

   Which is a really strange way to begin a bad review.

   This novel begins with Allon, recently retired from his employers the mysterious Office, in Cornwall with his Venetian born wife, Chiara, and visited by art dealer and friend Julian Isherwood, who is concerned with a missing Rembrandt and a murdered art restorer in Glastonbury whose latest project, a long lost Rembrandt portrait, has been stolen.

   The trail of the missing masterpiece leads Allon from haunted holy Glastonbury to Amsterdam, the center of the illegal art trade and forgery capital of Europe as well as home of Rembrandt himself, to Buenos Aires, and finally the lovely but duplicitous shores of Lake Geneva, where he finds the painting once again draws him into the world of international espionage and terrorism.

   Involved in the affair are a mysterious Swiss billionaire altruist who may also be behind the threat of modern terrorism, a guilt ridden art thief, and a beautiful London journalist, with a mistake of her own to redeem, who is key to Allon’s plan.

   And thereby hangs a tale, specifically my tale, or at least my review of this tale, because in Moscow Rules he recruits a beautiful woman to help him bring down a wealthy Russian secretly financing terrorism, and in Portrait of a Spy he recruits a beautiful woman to help him bring down an American born cleric in Yemen, and in The English Assassin…

   In each Allon has tried to quit the business, in each he stumbles onto a terrorist plot, in each some piece of art work is involved, in some the woman from the previous book helps him recruit the woman in the next. The women are all sophisticated, beautiful, and willing to use their minds and bodies to aid in the dangerous game afoot.

   In short, of the six books I’ve read by Daniel Silva they all have the exact same plot. Virtually no variation worth mentioning.

   It’s more than that though. Of the six books I have read he mentions a Mercedes Maybark on virtually the same page with virtually the same description.

   I have no problem with formula. Most great genre fiction is by nature formulaic. The gimmick on the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. series was that each week an innocent person would be drawn into the mission and be key to its success; but it wasn’t the virtually same person every week and no one was charging me close to $30 to read the damn things.

   Silva writes undeniably well, and his research and atmosphere are first rate, but he repeats the same book over and over and over, and it doesn’t matter if the characters have new names and some of the details and locations vary, each and every book is about a powerful untouchable shadow figure in the world of terrorism brought down by the reluctant spy Allon by pimping out a beautiful successful worldly woman.

   You would think someone would catch on eventually when he does damn near the same thing on the same page every book. This is as bad as S. S. Van Dine introducing the murderer in every Philo Vance mystery on the same page and line in every book.

   I can’t help but think that Silva is a better writer than this and his readers deserve more. I may be wrong. Perhaps they want to read the exact same book at $30 a pop over and over and over. Maybe they have short term memory problems. Maybe they don’t care and it is the world Silva portrays they love and plot and story and character don’t matter to them.

   Over time all writers repeat themselves, fall back on familiar phrases (James Bond’s ‘authentic comma of black hair’), revisit certain places, but even prolific John Creasey at the least managed to move the milieu from the Toff, to the Baron, to Patrick Dawlish, to Gideon, and so on and not do the exact same plot in the same series every time.

   It’s not that Silva repeats himself, it’s that he makes no effort to disguise it. He simply writes the same damn book over and over and expects his readers either to not notice or accept it, and no matter how talented he is, that is the work of a hack and not a writer. I have no problem with a writer selling out to success, but I do have a problem when he sells out his audience as well.

   Yes, it does matter for those of you who say so what. It matters because success like his breeds more bad books that do the same thing, and more lazy writers who think they can get away with it, and in the long run readers across the board are cheated, the genre is hurt, and good writers who try harder find it more difficult to break into a field where all the audience honors are reruns.

   Silva is worse to me than any hack because he is talented and writes well and has had success thanks to his fans, the ones he is shortchanging them even if they are too blinded to know it.

   In any case, now you at least know the plot to his next book — and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one …

   Ad infinitum, ad nauseum — literally.

   A library of mysteries is something like Forrest Gump’s chocolate box: you never know what you’ll find. What I happened to pull off a shelf the other day was one by Peter Cheyney entitled The Killing Game (Belmont Tower #50767, paperback, 1975) and looks like one of the author’s old spy novels in its first U.S. edition.

   The front cover blurb reads: “When the British Secret Service decides to recruit a guy there is no safe way he can say no.” The back cover blurb gives us more of the same: “A guy doesn’t say no when the British Secret Service decides he‘s the right man for some job. First, they ask him nice, then if he still resists they put on the pressure. If he still refuses to play cricket, the sinister sophisticates in the Saville (sic) Row suits may even frame him into jail in order to make him bite the bullet. After that he’s in over his head, and it’s just like the Mafia or the I.R.A. — once in, never out. They teach you all the dirty tricks and give you a license to kill. It’s a rotten, vicious business — The Killing Game.”

   Once you start skimming a few of the pages between these blurby covers, you’re likely to start giggling. Why? First off, the book isn’t a novel, it’s a collection of eight short stories. Second, no one gets forced into working for the Brits as the blurb describes. Third, and most likely to set the coffee pouring out the nose, the protagonists of the eight stories are women, and six of them even have a female first-person narrator! I think it’s safe to assume that Belmont Tower’s blurb writer was a man. And that he didn’t keep his job long.

   The original British title of The Killing Game is a bit hard to figure out. The copy I own, a Four Square paperback dating from 1968, is called The Adventures of Julia. The title page indicates that it was first issued in hardcover by the short-lived Todd Publishing Group back in 1954, a few years after Cheyney’s early death, as You’d Be Surprised, which is indeed the title of one of voluptuous spy Julia Heron’s short adventures (I use the word loosely).

   The invaluable Hubin bibliography doesn’t agree, listing The Adventures of Julia as the original title and giving You’d Be Surprised as the title of a Cheyney novel, published by Collins in 1940 and set in Paris. After a session of Web research I’ve concluded that Hubin is right about the novel, although he neglects to tell us that its protagonist is that rootin’ tootin’ two-gun-shootin’ G-Man (and mangler of Yank slang) Lemmy Caution.

   It would seem then that You’d Be Surprised was used as a Cheyney title no less than three times: on the 1940 novel, on the Julia Heron short story and, after Cheyney’s death, on the hardcover edition of Julia’s collected exploits. What a mess!

   I gather from Hubin that all eight tales in the Julia book originally appeared in pamphlet form during the years of the Blitz. They must have been intended to keep the minds of English readers occupied as they huddled in their air-raid shelters and the bombs came down on London. Mystery historian Howard Haycraft once mentioned that special “raid libraries” had been set up in Underground stations during the war for Londoners taking shelter from Hitler’s bombs but they aren’t mentioned in any accounts of the blitz that I’ve read, for example the vivid description in Volume 2 of Norman Sherry’s The Life of Graham Greene (1994). If anyone can direct me to fuller information about these libraries I’d be much obliged.

   Let’s cross the Channel, shall we? People who have read more of Georges Simenon’s hundreds of novels than I have tend to divide the Maigret cycle into at least three periods. The first runs from Pietr-le-Letton (written 1929, first published in France 1931) to Maigret (written 1933, first published in France 1934; first published in the UK as Maigret Returns, 1941), while the second opens with the short stories that began to appear in French magazines in 1936 and continues through a series of novels published in France during World War II. (Simenon made a great deal of money during the Nazi occupation of France but apparently was not a “collabo”.)

   The earliest of these novels was Les Caves du Majestic, which Simenon wrote in December 1939 but wasn’t published in the U.S. until 1978 as Maigret and the Hotel Majestic. The title seems to be a tip of the beret to Simenon’s friend and admirer André Gide (1869-1951) and his 1914 novel (which he refused to call a novel) Les Caves du Vatican.

   One of the most famous scenes in that book takes place on an express train between Rome and Naples: a character named Lafcadio, who’s sharing a compartment with a stranger named Amedée, throws the poor guy out of the speeding train to his death. Lit crit types call this un acte gratuit, an act without motivation, although Gide later questioned whether there could be any such animal.

   There are no actes gratuits in Simenon’s novel. The basement of the Hotel Majestic in Paris (which, according to www.trussel.com, a gem of a website if ever there was one, was modeled on Claridge’s Hotel in the same city) has more to do with Simenon’s plot than the caverns underneath the Vatican with Gide’s, but in neither work are the caves central as those beneath the Paris Opera House are in The Phantom of the Opera.

   The Maigret novel opens early one morning as a breakfast chef at the Majestic discovers the strangled body of a wealthy American woman in a basement locker and soon finds himself the prime suspect. Maigret discovers — Simenon doesn’t bother to tell us how — that the woman was French by birth and had been a semi-pro hooker in Cannes before she met an American millionaire and tricked him into marriage. In time the plot morphs from sexual to financial intrigue, and at the climax Maigret uncharacteristically punches the murderer in the nose.

   Here and elsewhere in middle-period Maigret, Simenon seems to stress plot more than earlier or later, although Ellery Queen-style fair play is still not his cup of café au lait. Writing at white heat as he did, Simenon slips here and there; for example, a police report in Chapter One gives the age of the dead woman’s maid as 42, but when Maigret gets to meet her much later in the book she’s described as an old lady.

   What makes Les Caves rough going in spots for American readers is that either the translator or the publisher was very careless with punctuation, sometimes forgetting to insert a new set of quote marks to indicate a new speaker, at other times inserting new marks although the speaker hasn’t changed.

   And one tends to get heartily sick of hearing Maigret ask “What’s he (or she) saying?” whenever a character speaks English and of hearing American characters ask the same question whenever Maigret or someone else speaks French.

   Still and all, I liked this book. After reading tons of Simenon’s in which Maigret simply absorbs people and atmospheres and at the appropriate moment tells us who did what, it’s a pleasure to find one in which he acts a bit more like a detective.

THE KARATE KILLERS. MGM, 1967. Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Joan Crawford, Curt Jurgens, Herbert Lom, Telly Savalas, Terry-Thomas, Leo G. Carroll, Kim Darby, Diane McBain, Jill Ireland, Philip Ahn. Previously seen on TV as the 87th & 88th episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: “The Five Daughters Affair” (Parts 1 and 2), 31 March and 7 April 1966. Director: Barry Shear.

   Like The Man in the Green Hat, which I reviewed here, The Karate Killers is the feature-length movie version of two The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodes. Directed by Barry Shear, who had a fairly prodigious output in television, this light, but nevertheless mildly entertaining movie features guest appearances by stars such as Joan Crawford, Telly Savalas, and Jill Ireland.

   While the plot isn’t particularly interesting, it moves forward with enough vigor to keep the audience engaged with the nearly non-stop action. U.N.C.L.E. agents, Napoleon Solo (Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (McCallum), trot the globe in search of five women, all daughters of a murdered scientist who found the means of extracting gold from seawater. Shades of Goldfinger, anyone?

   It’s an altogether amusing, if light on substance, late 1960s spy film. Look for Czechoslovakian-born actor Herbert Lom as Randolph, as the villain from THRUSH and for an amusing sequence in which Solo and Kuryakin sip tea in a Japanese geisha house. No one would likely categorize The Karate Killers as a bold work of art, but as pure entertainment, it’s not all that bad.

Editorial Comment:   For those of you who live in Los Angeles area and would like to see this on the big screen, it’s scheduled to be shown at the New Beverly Cinema next Saturday, August 15.