Thursday, January 12, 2006

Low grade action flicks by a great writer


I got some old VHS tapes from my dad and one of them was Cyclone, by Fred Olen Ray, the unsung hero of Z film making. I watched this in the course of two weeks, bits here and there every now and then. Last night I sat through the searing climax. Boy oh boy! The Finnish video publication from the eighties must've been cut, because they didn't really show how the guy who shouts "I kill you!" exploded.

The reason I watched was really that it was written - at least the additional material - by Terrill Lankford, under the alias of T.L. Lankford. He's also written that undying classic Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. And the reason why this interests me is that I'm going to interview the man, perhaps for Pulp, but I have other magazines in mind (only one actually, but let's not talk about that). Lankford is one of the most interesting and most praised new hardboiled writers of his generation, starting from Angry Moon and Shooters and continuing after a few years break with Earthquake Weather and Blonde Lightning. The last two especially shed light on Lankford's own experiences in the fringes of Hollywood. Lankford has also written harsh pieces about the state of publishing in the US in Ed Gorman's blog.

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