MITCHELL WILSON – None So Blind. Simon & Schuster/Inner Sanctum Mystery, hardcover, 1945. Hillman #182, paperback, 1960. Film: RKO, 1947, as The Woman on the Beach.

THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH. RKO, 1947. Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan, Charles Bickford. Based on the book None So Blind by Mitchell Wilson. Director: Jean Renoir.

   Ever wonder why some books even get made into movies? The question crossed my mind when I read None So Blind by Mitchell Wilson. It starts out as a moody and intriguing thing about a shell-shocked Naval Officer running a shore patrol station and trying to get his head together, as they say, who gets mixed up with a mysterious lady painter and her blind (or is he?) abusive husband.

   The ensuing story flirts with violence like a floozie in a Biker Bar, and it’s a pretty fine read… till the author writes himself into a corner, and their attempts to get out turn pretty sloppy; downright embarrassing, in fact.

   The closer I got to the end, the sorrier I felt for these poor schlemiels, as what could have been a nifty tale of murder for love turned to mush before my eyes.

   So for some reason, RKO decided to film this in 1947 as Woman on the Beach, and it suffers in the end game, too, but not quite so badly. The way it looks, when Director Jean Renoir saw there was no way to kill the story, he just quit shooting the damthing and went back to France.

   Beach ends without resolving the plot or consummating the Murder that looks to be bubbling just off-screen, but along the way there are some wondrous visuals of horses galloping across the gothic seacoast, desperate trysts in derelict shipwrecks, and fine performances from Joan Bennett, Charles Bickford, and especially Robert Ryan as the neurotic sailor.

      It’s no masterpiece, but off-beat and intriguing enough to make it worth your time.

THE SPY IN THE GREEN HAT. MGM, 1967. Robert Vaughn , David McCallum, Jack Palance, Janet Leigh, Eduardo Ciannelli, Allen Jenkins, Jack La Rue, Leo G. Carroll, Joan Blondell, Letícia Román. First aired on NBC, 10:00 p.m., Friday, November 25 and Friday, December 2, 1966 as episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: “The Concrete Overcoat Affair” (Parts 1 and 2). Director: Joseph Sargent.

   Situated somewhere between action film and satire is the fifth The Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature film, The Spy in the Green Hat. Part spy film, part anarchic spoof, the movie, like the other films in the series, is the theatrical release of previously aired television shows with some added, often risqué, material added on.

   Directed by Joseph Sargent, this entry is a campy romp featuring Jack Palance and Janet Leigh as THRUSH villains. Veteran actors Eduardo Ciannelli, Allen Jenkins, and Jack La Rue portray Chicago gangsters who team up with U.N.C.L.E. agents, Napoleon Solo (Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) to thwart THRUSH’s alliance with a former Nazi scientist. Adding to the excitement is the presence of Italian actress, Letícia Román who portrays an innocent Italian girl who inadvertently gets caught up in a whirlwind of international intrigue.

   As far as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodes go, these are fairly average. If it weren’t for Palance and Leigh, they wouldn’t be particularly notable. That said, the movie has enough action, silliness, and homage to make it a light, entertaining, albeit hardly memorable, 1960s spy film, even if the title has almost nothing to do with the movie. Well, except for the fact that a minor character at the very end happens to wear a — wait for it — green hat.

ANTIGONE 34. Made-for-TV mini-series; 6 x 60m episodes. Mascaret Films-France Télévision, France 2, 2012. Anne Le Nen, Claire Borotra, Bruno Todeschini, Aubert Fenoy, Hammou Graïa, Lionel Erdogan, Bruno López, Fred Tournaire. Creators: Alexis Nolent & Brice Homs. Directors: Louis-Pascal Couvelaire & Roger Simonsz (3 episodes each).

   Perhaps because this well-filmed mini-series originated in France and not this country, you can find a lot of false and misleading information about it on the Internet.

   I hope that in my comments that follow I don’t say anything more that isn’t true, but IMDB, for example, says there are four episodes, whereas there really are six. Some sites spell the name of the main character, police detective Léa Hippolyte (Anne Le Nen), incorrectly.

   Nor is Antigone 34 a newly created task force to fight crime, as some sites say. It’s an ordinary police station in Montpellier, a mid-sized town in southern France on the Mediterranean Sea, but as such it still manages to have its hands full of murders to solve as well as the usual thefts, felonies and misdemeanors that plague every city in every part of the world.

   At least one review calls the series nothing more than an American police procedural transported to its French locale. I think if you watched only the first episode you might get that idea. A young female medical student is murdered, then another. The police think at first it was a hazing session gone bad, then a drug deal gone sour (a corpse being dissected in the college is found to have a package of white powder inside him), before coming back to a Castle type twist at the end.

   But wait. It’s not the end at all, but only the beginning. A scene that follows suggests that there’s more to the story, and indeed there is. The six episodes constitute one long story line, punctuated by single stories along the way: a missing video game designer, a hit-and-run driver with a fake ID, a robbery at a tuna warehouse, a pizza delivery hit man, and a plastic surgery gone bad.

   Each of these individual cases are somehow connected, however, with Léa Hippolyte at the center of whatever larger intrigue is occurring in Montpellier, usually a bright and sunny town, but darker elements exist seemingly with every twist of the tale, including, Léa suspects, within the police force itself.

   Assisting her are a Hélène de Soyère, a newly hired police psychologist, and Victor Carlier, a doctor newly out of prison whose daughter was the first victim in episode one, a case thought to be closed, but he does not think so. The psychologist’s first duty, by the way, is to clear Léa for duty again, after her previous partner committed suicide. She’s fine; other members of the police force still seem to have problems with it.

   The setting is often gorgeous, especially along the shore, but on occasion the story also heads off to some inner parts of the city and places where you and I might not care to find ourselves in at night. The series is shot almost continually with handheld cameras, even while listening in on ordinary conversations, then with fast action camera movements while making scene shifts.

   Because perhaps the series was filmed in French, even with subtitles I felt I missed sizable chunks of the story. Not enough to cause me worry or pain, you understand, but I do think there were some issues that were left unresolved, perhaps held over for a second series, of which there has been and will be none.

   The star attraction, however, as far as I was concerned, was the performance of Anne Le Nen, previously involved in fashion design and a student in the martial arts, particularly when it comes to self-defense for women. She was 41 when this series was made, a brunette with piercing blue eyes, a very athletic build and a beautifully expressive face showing resolve, anger, frustration and confidence in equal proportion. It’s too bad there was no follow up to this series. As I sad, she is the star attraction. All eyes are on her whenever she’s in a scene.

  ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Perjured Parrot. Ballantine, 1982. First published in hardcover by William Morrow, 1939. Other paperback reprints include: Pocket #378, 1947. Cardinal C-379, 1959.

   The problem, of course, with the Perry Mason stories is that the characters are totally flat and one-dimensional. Gardner’s prose, utilitarian at best, is designed only to tell the story and is best otherwise ignored.

   But the stories he tells — I can’t resist ’em. They’re low on action and high in idea content. The plot and red herrings are simply mind-dazzling — if only you could sort them out!

   I read one chapter and I’m hooked. I’ve guessed who done it from time to time, but not very often. I read too fast, I think, and Mason’s too smart for me.

   Gardner is obsessed with circumstantial evidence, and it helps to keep in mind that his facts are always subject to considerable variation. This time I thought I’d outguessed him, but somehow he managed to zig left just as I was zagging right.

   Involved are at least three parrots, hints of police graft and corruption, forged checks, multi-bigamous marriages and questionable divorce decrees, a will and two widows, and a time of death that turns out to be of utmost importance.

   Mason also makes an ass out of another pompous witness. You’d think they’d learn.

Rating:   B.

   Méliès’ films [see Part One of this three-part essay] be thought of as marginal to films of mystery and detection, but not if one remembers the many writers and directors of mystery films who have either been accomplished magicians or interested in magic and who have made use of this in their films.

   Tod Browning was a director who used theatrical illusion in several of his best films, and the rarely seen Miracles for Sale (MGM, 1939), based on Clayton Rawson’s Death from a Top Hat, makes extensive use of magic in a suspenseful melodrama of stage magicians and psychic phenomena.

   Robert Young does a competent job as Michael Morgan, a re-named Rawson Merlini, who has unaccountably acquired a folksy father played by Frank Craven in his best Our Town style. (I wonder if MGM didn’t entertain some faint hope that this film might spawn a series with Young/Craven sharing in some of the popularity of the Ellery Queen father-son duo.)

   It’s a well-produced film in which Morgan, through damsel-in-distress Judy Barkley (played by Florence Rice), becomes involved in spiritualism and murder, but the spookiness of the premise is undercut by some conventional thirties’ farce.

   There is a seance that has some of the style — and chills — of Browning’s better work, and fanciers of such things will be interested to see Gloria Holden (the daughter of the underrated Dracula’s Daughter) in another of her frozen-face roles but with none of the sexual perversity that made her playing in the earlier film more interesting.

   Miracles for Sale comes off as a glossy, entertaining swan song for Browning, and it is unfortunate that most people now know his work through Dracula, which is his least characteristic film and far from his best.

   You will not find in Miracles for Sale the brilliance of Freaks (with its superb bridal party sequence), but it’s an accomplished bit of directing and should not be relegated to a footnote in a history of his career.

MIRACLES FOR SALE. MGM, 1939. Robert Young, Florence Rice, Frank Craven, Henry Hull, Lee Bowman, Cliff Clark, Astrid Allwyn. Based on the book Death from a Top Hat, by Clayton Rawson. Director: Tod Browning.

THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT. Independent Artists, UK, 1961. Derren Nesbitt, Keith Faulkner, Carol White. Written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice. Directed by Vernon Sewell.

   I really wish I hadn’t read about this in The Encyclopedia of Horror Films because it’s a movie that deserves to be seen fresh, and the Encyclopedia makes no bones about giving away endings. So my recommendation here is that you stop reading this review right now, find a copy of Man in the Back Seat and settle down for a nice hour or so in 60s noir-land.

   Yeah, I figured you’d ignore that sage advice, so I’ll go ahead and tell you that the story revolves around a couple of young spivs (British slang for flashy small-time criminals) who let themselves in for a night-long odyssey of greed and desperation when they waylay a bookie and hit him a bit too hard.

   What follows could be played for comedy, as everything that could possibly go wrong proceeds to do so. For starters, the victim keeps his money-satchel handcuffed his wrist, and the boys have to cart his inert form around in the car—hence the title of the piece. But the writing and directing keep it tense and downbeat, due mainly to the time they take with the characters. Tony (Derren Nesbitt) is clearly the dominant member of the duo, but he’s just as obviously stupid and immature; just the sort you want in charge.

   Frank (Keith Faulkner) is basically decent but easily bossed around, and as things deteriorate you can see him mentally melting down under the pressure, and not helped at all by encounters with his wife (Carol White) who loves him for his good nature but is quickly disenchanted by his weakness as he and Tony throw one lie after another at her.

   This could easily have ended up as a rather standard late-noir crime film, but it doesn’t and I refuse to spoil it by telling you why. Just bear in mind that the writers here worked on television’s The Avengers in its mid-60s hey-day, and director Vernon Sewell specialized in creepy ghost flicks (including writing and directing three versions of House of Mystery) and expect the unexpected, as they say.

MYSTERY LINER. Monogram, 1934. Noah Beery, Astrid Allwyn, Edwin Maxwell, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Ralph Lewis, Cornelius Keefe, Zeffie Tilbury, Boothe Howard. Based on the short story “The Ghost of John Holling” (The Saturday Evening Post, 8 March 1924) by Edgar Wallace. Director: William Nigh.

   The story was good enough to be reprinted in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (April 1963), but watching this movie based on it is as big a waste of time as watching the city trucks cruise up and down the block on garbage pickup day.

   It has something to do with a new scientific discovery that allows ships at sea to be operated by remote control from a staff of laboratory workers on shore. Lots of secret skulkers abound, including someone who looks like the previous captain, who was replaced when he was overcome by madness and was taken to a sanitarium.

   Plus secret passages, if I’m not giving too much away, a shot in the dark when the lights go out, another murder, and for comedy relief, a noisy old biddy who takes over the film when nothing else of importance is going on, which seems like half the film, but probably isn’t.

   Director William Nigh went on to better if not bigger things, such as the Mr. Wong movies, but Noah Beery’s role of the original captain is so small it could have been played by anyone. Some claim he was in it only for his name on the marquee value. Certainly no one else’s had any, then or now.

L. E. MODESITT, JR. – The Magic of Recluce. Tor, hardcover, May 1991; paperback, May 1992.

   I wonder how many created-world heroic fantasies have been written since Tolkien made them respectable? Quintscillions, at least, and most of them aren’t worth reading, and most of the rest aren’t anything special. I thought this one stood out a bit from the large and somnolent herd.

   A young lad (15) doesn’t fit in his culture, which is an island nation composed of a mysterious people who adhere fanatically to Order. Our hero finds them boring and is found by them to be an unacceptable influence, and a potential danger to order.

   He and some other misfits are given an option: exile, or go out into the wider world on a mission assigned them, to be allowed to return only when it’s completed. He is, of course, more than he seems or knows.

   Considered separately, the story’s components don’t sound too original: Order against Chaos, a youthful quest, good magicians and bad. It is, however, a lot better and more different than it sounds. The world is well thought out and constructed, and the characters a good deal more than cardboard.

   Modesitt writes well and I found his pacing excellent. Recluce is by far his best book to date, and though there will be at least one more book with this setting, this one stands alone well enough. It plows no startlingly new ground, but if you like fantasy at all it’s well worth your time.

      The Recluce series —

1. The Magic of Recluce (1991)
2. The Towers of Sunset (1992)

3. The Magic Engineer (1994)
4. The Order War (1995)
5. The Death of Chaos (1995)

6. Fall of Angels (1996)
7. The Chaos Balance (1997)
8. The White Order (1998)
9. Colors of Chaos (1999)
10. Magi’i of Cyador (2000)

11. Scion of Cyador (2000)
12. Wellspring of Chaos (2004)
13. Ordermaster (2005)
14. Natural Ordermage (2007)
15. Mage-Guard of Hamor (2008)

16. Arms-Commander (2010)
17. Cyador’s Heirs (2014)
18. Heritage of Cyador (2014)

   A friend informed me of Steve Kennedy’s death around 4:00 pm earlier yesterday, and I’ve had problems accepting the news. I last heard from Steve a few weeks ago and at that time he was under a lot of stress due to his attempts to sell his NYC apartment and finish building his dream house in Woodstock, NY. He had been talking to me about both projects for many years and he hoped the money from the apartment sale would finance the completion of the Woodstock house. He had suffered some type of health problem a couple years ago which showed that his blood pressure was very high, and my impression was that he did not seem well.

   I still remember my first sight of Steve as though it was only the other day. It was 1987 and he was in the Pulpcon dealer’s room carrying around a cover painting by Rafael Desoto from Dime Detective. He wanted to sell it but was getting no interest at all from the pulp collectors. This was a common reaction in the 1970’s and 1980’s when most pulp collectors were only interested in SF or hero pulp art. If the paintings were from western, detective, or adventure magazines, then there was usually no interest at all even if the price was low.

   I know it’s hard to believe now when these paintings often sell for thousands of dollars but back then you could not even get offers when the price was only a few hundred dollars each. The only exceptions were SF and hero magazine covers. I know this for a fact because I built my pulp cover painting collection by paying only $200 to around $400 each for most non-SF genre paintings. In the 1990’s I had to start paying more and eventually due to the prices that Bob Lesser was willing to pay, the cost of pulp paintings really increased.

   Since no one was willing to buy the Desoto painting, I bought it for only $325 in 1987. That began our 28 year friendship during which Steve sold me many paintings including some by Norman Saunders, Rafael Desoto, Walter Baumhofer, etc. Even a couple years ago when I told him I wanted a double page spread by Nick Eggenhofer, he sold me a beautiful drawing from the collection of art dealer, Walt Reed.

   As I walk through my house, almost every room has paintings that I bought from Steve over the years. He visited my house several times each year for a total of over a hundred visits. Several times we drove out to Pulpcon together in my car. He would arrive the day before and sleep over due to my habit of getting an early start to drive to Pulpcon.

   Steve was the only collector that my wife would put up with staying over because he at least dealt with art and paintings and was not covered with pulp chips from the magazines that so exasperate her. Steve and I both felt that there was nothing wrong with a house full of old magazines and books, not to mention pulp and paperback cover paintings!

   We often told each other funny stories about non-collectors and in addition to the many visits, we had hundreds of telephone conversations, many late at night at around midnight. Since Steve did not work regular hours being self employed, he often called me late which I had no problem with because I’m always up late during the night reading books and pulps.

   The wedding of Steve Kennedy and Jane came as a surprise to all his friends because he was always puzzled by NYC women and was in his 50’s when he got married in 2001. I guess Jane was really not from NYC. The wedding was held at Jane’s parents place in Woodstock, NY and was without a doubt the best wedding I ever attended. Not just the food and atmosphere but they had two bands: a Brazilian jazz group and two classical guitar players.

   One funny thing about Steve getting married was that since he had been a bachelor for so long, he was scared of finally getting married. So much so that he called me in a nervous attack one night and asked me to give my opinion. Should he get married? I of course said sure go ahead because Steve was an art dealer and Jane was an art appraiser. Not the typical collector and non-collector disaster!

   So, I’m still trying to process the information. Steve Kennedy is gone? No more visits, no more late night phone calls? No more trips to Pulpfest or Windy City? Another of my old friends gone for good? This is hard to believe that someone so much a part of my life can simply disappear.

   Goodbye Steve. R.I.P.

TARZAN’S MAGIC FOUNTAIN. RKO Radio Pictures, 1949. Lex Barker, Brenda Joyce, Albert Dekker, Evelyn Ankers, Charles Drake, Alan Napier. Based upon the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Director: Lee Sholem.

   While I doubt that many people would consider Tarzan’s Magic Fountain to be their favorite Tarzan movie, that doesn’t mean that it’s not perfectly adequate cinematic escapism.

   Directed by Lee Sholem, the movie was Lex Barker’s first appearance as the eponymous title character. As for Brenda Joyce, this would be here final appearance as Jane, having portraying Tarzan’s love interest in four movies with Johnny Weissmuller.

   Tarzan’s Magic Fountain is also notable for featuring Evelyn Ankers, best known for her work in 1940s-era horror films. Ankers portrays Gloria James Jessup, an aviatrix whose plane crashed in the jungle decades before.

   For years, Jessup had been living with a secretive tribe who control access to – you guessed it! – a secret fountain with restorative powers. As in, fountain of youth powers that make her look a lot younger than fifty. But when scheming criminals get word of the fountain’s existence and when some tribesmen decide they don’t like Tarzan mucking around, there’s conflict and when there’s conflict, there’s adventure to be had. It’s predictable, but it’s not bad.