“Back for Christmas.” An episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Season 1, Episode 23. First airdate: March 4, 1956. John Williams (Herbert), Isabel Elsom (Hermione). Teleplay: Francis M. Cockrell, based on the story by John Collier (The New Yorker, 1939). Director: Alfred Hitchcock.

   While there are eleven speaking parts in this teleplay, only two really matter: Herbert, the put-upon, repressed husband (masterfully underplayed by quintessential British actor John Williams), and his officious wife Hermione (Elsom).

   Our first impression is aural: the sound of someone digging. It’s Herbert, ostensibly excavating an area for a wine cellar.

   When Hermione comes down to check on him, the camera pans and lingers over her in a subjective POV shot from Herbert’s point of view. Later, Hitchcock will give us another long, lingering POV shot of Hermione as the couple are entertaining friends. In both instances, Herbert’s face all but telegraphs his intentions — but no one, especially Hermione, seems to notice.

   Once Herbert hefts an iron pipe, looks sideways at his wife, and — when she has gone back upstairs — checks his passport to confirm how tall she is compared to the hole he’s digging, the audience member who hasn’t caught on by now to what he’s planning really should be ashamed of himself.

   Like anyone who has carefully planned to commit a crime, Herbert has been meticulous almost to a fault — but also like most premeditating criminals, Herbert fails to allow for the unexpected….

   Not to be confused with the American music composer of the same name, John Williams (1903-83) was one of Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite actors. He appeared ten times on Alfred Hitchcock Presents from 1955-59.

   Prior to that, he had won a Broadway Tony Award for playing Chief Inspector Hubbard in Dial M for Murder (1953), a role he would reprise for Hitchcock’s film version (1954), in which he delivers the memorable line: “They talk about flat-footed policemen. May the saints protect us from the gifted amateur.”

   Williams also had a substantial supporting part in To Catch a Thief (1955), dogging jewel thief Cary Grant for most of the film. And he was a pivotal character in the Thriller series adaptation of Robert Bloch’s “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1961), ironically an episode directed by Ray Milland, the killer he brought down in Dial M for Murder.

   No suprise that he would be cast as William Shakespeare in a Twilight Zone episode (1963), frequently and ostentatiously quoting … himself.

   John Collier (1901-80) has 27 credits on the IMDb, including seven Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1956-61), one Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1964), and six Tales of the Unexpected (1980-85), among them a remake of “Back for Christmas.”

   The original “Back for Christmas” can be viewed on Hulu here. A fairly detailed discussion of this episode can be found at Senses of Cinema here.

Dear Walker:

   My own collection is all but complete — meaning that I’ve almost acquired all of the items on my want list. Of course I’ll always be out there keeping my eye open for serendipitous books and magazines, but I only have a very few more such items that I’m actually looking for. Once I find those I’m essentially done. Then I’ll just give them all away to the Salvation Army thrift store and start over… Your advice, please!

Dear C.P.

   You have touched on a dangerous subject that all serious collectors must beware. I’ve seen many collectors fall into the dreaded trap of completing their collection. Usually once the collection is completed then many collectors lose interest and start thinking what next?

   This results in the selling off of many collections because the enthusiasm of the chase and the drive to collect is now finished. Collectors that limit themselves to a favorite author or magazine are prone to losing interest once their goal of completion has been achieved.

   Since collecting can be so much fun, how do we avoid falling into the abyss and losing interest in our collections after completion? The answer I have found is very simple, you do not allow yourself to complete your collection. You have to keep expanding your interests.

   For instance, in your case, if you are close to completing your SF wants, then you have to develop an interest in another genre, another subject, other magazines. Maybe detective fiction or adventure pulps or original art to go along with your SF collection. Something else!

   For instance in my own case, I started off in 1956, at the age of 13 collecting SF. This continued for around 10 years until I discovered detective pulps thanks to Ron Goulart’s Hardboiled Dicks anthology. This led me to collecting all sorts of mystery fiction like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald. It led me to completing sets of such great magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective.

   But then around 1980, I was faced again with the horrifying realization that I was nearing completion of the detective and mystery wants. I quickly expanded to adventure and western fiction and started to work on extensive sets of Western Story, West, Short Stories, Adventure, All Story, Argosy, Blue Book, Popular, Sea Stories and many others.

   As I started to complete these magazines and run out of reading matter, I decided my job was taking up too much of my time and interfering with my reading and collecting activities. So in 2000 I retired to concentrate on building up what may be the world’s largest collection of literary magazines.

   I’ve yet to meet another collector that is interested in these artifacts, but I love them, and I can fall into a trance looking and smelling the scent of rows and rows of literary quarterlies like the Hudson Review, The Criterion, Scrutiny, The London Magazine, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, and The Virginia Quarterly. I could go on and on forever but I’m sure you are all disgusted and fatigued reading about someone else’s collecting addictions. Hell, I actually read these things.

   But the end may be near, even for me. I’ve mentioned before about almost being crushed by the collapsing of one of my basement bookcases due to overloading. Then a year or so later several bookcases fell on top of me and my son. Then last month a bookcase of literary magazines showered me with more than a hundred issues of the Sewanee Review.

   It was heavenly. I just stood there as the magazines rained down on me and I felt at peace. Then I had to go to work picking them up off the floor and stacking them before my wife came to investigate the noise. She’s heard the sound of collapsing shelves and stacks falling, so she never asked me until a couple days later about the crashing noise that she chose to ignore.

   Probably, she was hoping that I had tempted fate once too often and had been pounded flat as a pancake by the old magazines that she now hates with a passion. But no, I survived once again, just like some pulp super hero!

   So I say to you, C.P., don’t stop collecting. There are unknown fields still to conquer. Don’t spend all your salary on your bills, your family, college fees for your children. You work hard for your money; spend some of it on collecting!

   Now I have to go back to a discussion I’ve been having with myself for 50 years. What is the greatest fiction magazine ever? Is it Adventure in the 1920’s, All Story in the teens, Black Mask and Weird Tales in the 1930’s, Astounding and Unknown in the 1940’s, Galaxy in the 1950’s and 1960’s?

   How about The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which has to fit somewhere. How about the SF fiction in Playboy and Omni, or the mystery fiction in Manhunt or EQMM?

   Maybe I better fix up these bookcases so they don’t collapse; I need answers to the above questions!

Previously in this series:   Collecting Manhunt.

NIGHTMARE. United Artists, 1956. Kevin McCarthy, Edward G. Robinson, Connie Russell, Virginia Christine, Rhys Williams, Gage Clarke, Marian Carr, Meade “Lux” Lewis, Billy May and His Orchestra. Screenplay by Maxwell Shane, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. Director: Maxwell Shane. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

    “We welcome Kevin McCarthy with a screening of this nifty noir mystery than (sic) crackles with the sense of paranoia that pervades much of Cornell Woolrich’s fiction.”

   Oh, my. The film was scheduled when the program committee was unable to get permission to show Death of a Salesman. It was neither nifty nor did it crackle, but the Woolrich novel at least provided an interesting plot (musician/composer McCarthy dreams he’s committed a murder and eventually discovers the dream is apparently true), and Robinson, somewhat miscast but making the best of it, plays the detective brother-in-law of McCarthy who sifts through the damning scenario to unravel the plot that has ensnared and almost brings down McCarthy.

   The location filming in New Orleans added some color to the film, and the appearance of Meade Lewis and Billy May spiced the film for their fans.

   McCarthy was interviewed at some length about his film and theater career, and he was less obstreperous as an interview subject than he was reputed to be in his Hollywood years. He’s probably best known for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but I don’t recall that he had much to say about the film.

BLACK MOON. Columbia Pictures, 1934. Jack Holt, Fay Wray, Dorothy Burgess, Cora Sue Collins, Arnold Korff, Clarence Muse, Eleanor Wesselhoeft, Madame Sul-Te-Wan. Director: Roy William Neill.

   This early voodoo movie is a little old-fashioned in its presentation — and you could even say out-and-out clunky and get away with it — but there some very some effective moments in Black Moon. Especially weird and strange are the scenes of native sacrifices, filmed against a backdrop of drums constantly beating on a fictional (though very Haiti-like) island in the Caribbean.

   It’s easy to call Black Moon old-fashioned today, but when you think about it, how ready would audiences have been for a movie like this in 1934?

   Isolated on the island is a small outpost of whites: a man; his young daughter; his secretary (secretly in love with him); his wife, who has been caught under the voodoo spell since she was child, even back in New York City; and her uncle, who owns a plantation on the island. (The young girl’s nanny barely counts, as she dies very early on.)

   By old-fashioned, though, I mean (for example) the story moves only in fits and starts, and one can easily wonder why everyone stays so calm (relatively speaking) when the deaths and the other strange and eerie events begin. (Some things have never changed in movies like this, not since day one.)

   Of the actors, Jack Holt does stolid well. Fay Wray as his secretary and the exotic Dorothy Burgess as his wife provide the beauty, and this they do very well, maybe even better.

BILL PRONZINI – Jackpot. Delacorte, hardcover, 1990. Dell, paperback, 1991.

   Bill Pronzini will find it tough indeed to top his scintillating 1988 “Nameless” novel, Shackles, and he doesn’t with the next, Jackpot, but by any other standard this is a very tasty morsel.

   Nameless is still, months after his harrowing experiences in Shackles, undergoing anxiety attacks and learning new things — not all gratifying — about himself.

   He needs to keep busy at work so his mind is distracted, and he takes on a nothing case as a favor to his friend Kerry. It seems that an otherwise very ordinary chap named David Burnett won $200,000 in a Lake Tahoe casino, then lost it all and more somehow, and committed suicide.

   It’s very plainly suicide, but David’s sister doesn’t believe it, and Nameless, more as a comfort than anything else, agrees to check a few things. The more he checks, the more odor of fish turns up, and in due course it’s likely to be the stink of death, probably his.

   Very smooth and observant narrative.

ANITA BLACKMON – Murder à la Richelieu. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1937. William Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1938, as The Hotel Richelieu Murders.

   As the oldest and richest resident of the Hotel Richelieu, Miss Adelaide Adams, a spinster sometimes called the “Old Battle-Ax,” sees all and knows all of what goes on in the hotel. Oh, except for the blackmailing, the prostitution, the body in her room hanged and with its throat slit, the — but to go on would be to give away an essential plot element.

   Two more murders occur, both of the victims like the first killed twice, if such a thing is possible. Almost as bad, Miss Adelaide is discovered several times minus her false hair and teeth.

   Miss Adelaide detects in her own way. She’s a lot like Louisa Revell’s Miss Julia Tyler — rather inept. Still, it’s through her efforts that the killer is unmasked. A quite enjoyable novel, and I am beginning a search for Blackmon’s only other mystery, also featuring Miss Adelaide.

   Warning: The setting here is the South, probably the Deep South. At one point Miss Adelaide says, “…no well brought-up Southern woman ever read Uncle Tom’s Cabin or allowed that obnoxious book to be mentioned in her presence.” The lady’s views on blacks are those of the times and the place, which, alas, were not enlightened.

NOTE:   The other mystery-solving adventure of Miss Adelaide referred to by Bill was There Is No Return (Doubleday, 1938). For a long, detailed overview of Anita Blackmon’s writing career, check out this post by Curt Evans which appeared earlier on this blog.

ANNA DEAN – A Woman of Consequence. Allison & Busby, UK, hardcover, 2010. St. Martin’s/Minotaur, US, hardcover, April 2012.

Genre:   Historical Mystery. Leading character:  Miss Dido Kent; 3rd in series. Setting:   England, 1806–Georgian era.

First Sentence:   My dear Eliza, I promised yesterday that just as soon as I had leisure for writing should send you a full and satisfactory account of Penelope Lambe’s accident at Madderstone Abbey; and so I shall begin upon it.

   Unconscious after Penelope Lambe falls down stone steps in the ruin of Madderstone Abbey, it is thought she saw the ghost of the Grey Nun. Miss Dido Kent is skeptical and believes the cause was more corporal than spiritual.

   When a skeleton, identified as Elinor Fenn, governess, is found within a lake being drained on the property, the verdict is self-murder. A friend does not believe Miss Fenn would have committed suicide and, in order to save her being buried in unconsecrated ground, asks Dido to investigate.

   With a wonderful opening, I am reminded how much I enjoy the voice of Anna Dean and, therefore, her character Dido Kent. With shades of Jane Austen and her own delightful, wry humor, we are transported back to Georgian England… “I believe that every family which has any claim at all to grandeur should have a ghost. I consider it a kind of necessary which should be attended to as soon as the fortune is made and the country estate purchased.”

   Ms. Dean writes her books in both third person narrative and first person through letters from Dido to her sister. While some may find this annoying, for me it is an interesting and amusing way of conveying relevant information without slowing down the story. It allows us to see both all the events and be privy to Dido thoughts at the same time.

   At 36 years old, Dido is considered a spinster, yet is anything but shy and retiring. She has a logical mind and approach to solving problems by investigating the clues. The secondary story of her relationship with Mr. Lomax provides an interesting look at relationships and social mores of the time. Mr. Lomax discomfort at Dido discussing “unsuitable” subjects, including the vulnerability of women, and the proprietary of the interactions between them are both delightful and most honest representations I have read.

   Ms. Dean has written a mystery of twists and turns, of relationships and unexpected revelations. I was intrigued by some of the history, particularly the doctor trying to determine the cause of asthma.

   With more substance than a cozy, this was a very good traditional mystery. I anxiously await her fourth book.

Rating:   Very Good.

       The Dido Kent series —

1. A Moment of Silence (2008). Published as Bellfield Hall in the US.

2. A Gentleman of Fortune (2009)
3. A Woman of Consequence (2010)

   I saw something the other day I never knew existed: An intelligent Kung-Fu Movie. After seeing his segment on the TV series The Incredibly Strange Film Show, I finally found a couple Jackie Chan films at a local video store and rented them.

   I should confess at the outset that I used to watch Kung-Fu movies on a semi-regular basis, and mildly enjoyed them, despite their almost total lack of competence, but if anyone had told me there existed martial arts films with wit and humor, I wouldn’t have believed them, particularly after watching the first four films mentioned here.

   Dragon Lord was only mildly disappointing, with long stretches of supposedly witty banter between Jackie Chan and his buddy, both of whom rather improbably play juveniles.

   As you might expect, whatever wit there may have been in the original dialogue got fumbled in translation. Also the pan-and-scan is woefully inadequate at times. There are a couple of imaginative action scenes, though, including one where Jackie sneaks across a roof while bad guys inside thrust spears up at him.

   In all, while this was nothing to write home about, it was not bad enough to keep me from watching other Jackie Chan movies.

   Master with Cracked Fingers seems to be an earlier film, and is completely routine Kung-Fu stuff. I wouldn’t show it to my dog, but it did remind me of a conundrum of the genre:

   In this and most other Kung-Fu flicks, there’s almost always a climactic battle with the hero or heroes fighting it out — sometimes two or three against one — with some aged character who looks like the Chinese equivalent of Lionel Barrymore. Can any of you Orientalists out there tell me why it seems so particularly important and praiseworthy for Martial Artists to drub these old duffers?

   The Protector was a conscious attempt by Chan to break into the American market, and to this end Danny Aiello was hired to co-star. (Yeah, that’ll pack ’em in.)

   Unfortunately, the producers forgot to write a part for Aiello, so he spends the film standing around saying things like “You’re the boos, Jackie,” “Right behind you, Jackie,” and “Here it is, Jackie.”

   Jay Silverheels got better lines than that! The film itself is suffused with a modest sheen of competence, but the plot and characterization are so routine as to have been done by rote.

   Fantasy Mission Force, on the other hand, is almost bad enough to be good. It’s set in World War II. Everyone drives brightly-colored Suzuki Jeeps with roll bars, and one of the Generals wears a Civil War uniform, but it’s supposed to be WWII.

   The plot, such as it is, involves a super-Commando (not Jackie Chan) assigned to rescue four allied Generals kidnapped by Japanese Nazis(!) in Luxembourg, which, it turns out, has no cities but lots of dense jungle and bamboo huts.

   To this end, the Super-Grunt recruits a force of spectacularly incompetent outlaws in a variety of period costumes, and they all set out for wherever the Generals are being held.

   From this point on, the plot gets a little strange, as the World War II Commando Force encounters Cannibal Amazons, Ghosts, Punk Road Warriors in beat-up Ford Mustangs, and a wandering chicken thief played (about time!) by Jackie Chan.

   As I say, it’s almost bad enough to enjoy, but ultimately the lack of enthusiasm on the part of all concerned in its making sinks this one.

   So finally we get to Police Force (aka Jackie Chan’s Police Force, aka Police Story), which is quite simply an intelligent, imaginative Action Film, on a par with the best of the James Bond’s, or just about any French Thriller, with lots of visual gags and a couple of actual developed characters.

   Police Force also features some very imaginatively-staged action scenes, including the destruction of a hillside village by driving little cars through it, and the similar trashing of a multi-floor mega-mall in an extended fistfight.

   As for the Star himself, Jackie Chan emerges here as a sort of Asiatic Belmondo, complete with klutzy machismo, self-deprecating humor, and an insistence that all his action scenes be shot so as to show that he’s not using a stunt man.

   It’s a device that’s been used before, notably by such cinematic athletes as Doug Fairbanks and Fred Astaire, and it’s rather well suited to the straight Action Film. I had to wade through a lot of celluloid slop to get there, but Police Force was worth the trip.

● DRAGON LORD. Authority Films, 1982. Also released as Dragon Strike; original title: Long xiao ye. Starring, co-written by and directed by Jackie Chan.

● MASTER WITH CRACKED FINGERS. Soon Lee Films, 1971. Original title: Guang dong xiao lao hu. Jackie Chan, Siu Tien Yuen. Director: Mu Zhu.

● THE PROTECTOR. Golden Harvest Company, 1985. Jackie Chan, Danny Aiello, Sandy Alexander. Director: James Glickenhaus.

● FANTASY MISSION FORCE. Cheung Ming Films, 1982. Original title: Mi ni te gong dui. Jackie Chan, Brigitte Lin. Director: Yen-ping Chu.

● POLICE FORCE. Golden Way Films Ltd., 1985. Also released as Police Story. Original title: Ging chat goo si. Jackie Chan, Brigitte Lin. Director: Jackie Chan.

ILLEGAL ENTRY. Universal, 1949. Howard Duff, Märta Torén, George Brent, Gar Moore, Tom Tully, Paul Stewart. Director: Frederick De Cordova.

   Director Frederick De Cordova is, of course, far better known for his work producing and directing on TV than in the movies, and even then more for his work in comedy (Jack Benny, Johnny Carson) than for fare of a more criminous nature. This semi-documentary near-noir film about illegal immigration into California in the late 1940s was never his usual stock in trade, by far.

   Nor is anything more than average all the way around, even with a host of recognizable names and faces for movies of this type, including star Howard Duff, he with the voice of Sam Spade and the quizzically uplifted eyebrows.

   As a former Air Force pilot Bert Powers, Duff is asked to work undercover to get the goods on a ruthless gang of illegal alien importers — so ruthless are they as to drop their freight out of an open door if they feel the feds are getting too close.

   The reason he’s brought in is because Märta Torén, the widow of a good buddy of Powers, is somehow connected with the gang. And indeed she is, but not willingly, which gives Powers all kinds of false signals, to his complete frustration.

   There’s nothing deep involved in this tale, which is competently told, but unless you’re a fan of any of the players, you’ll forget it almost as soon as the bad guys have been caught. Forgive me for giving the ending away just now, but as you well know, you’d be much more surprised if they weren’t.

NICOLE BYRD – Widow in Scarlet. Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, September 2003.

   Taking the title first, there are in fact, two widows in scarlet that appear in this rather long romantic adventure, set in England’s famed Regency era.

   The first is poverty-stricken Lucy Contrain, whose husband died an untimely death a year before. The second is the famed “Scarlet Widow,” a fabulous ruby purchased by the Prince Regent, but which managed to disappear while it was on its way to England.

   Accusing Lucy’s late husband of collaborating with the gang of thieves and murderers he believes was involved is Nicholas Ramsey, Viscount Richmond, a man whose reputation as a ladies’ man and seductor hides a highly capable agent of the prince.

   Lucy is at first amazed and then determined to aid the viscount in his investigations — an unlikely pair of sleuths, to be sure, but the mother-and-daughter team who write jointly as Nicole Byrd skillfully gloss over any quibbles that might arise in the minds of picky readers, such as myself.

   More satisfying than the mystery or its solution — of which the prologue reveals far too much — is the attraction that grows between the two protagonists, in fits and starts, but in true fashion of the day.

   Widow in Scarlet is recommended more, therefore, for its intended audience, Regency romance enthusiasts, than it is for anyone actually reading this review — devotees of detective tales all, I’m sure — but for the former, the spirited adventure will be all the more icing on the cake.