Marxist Noir

Very interesting interview with Alan Wald about the connections of American proletarian realism and hardboiled school of crime writing at the Crime Time website. Authors mentioned: Jim Thompson, Kenneth Fearing, Ed Lacy, Ira Wolfert, Albert Maltz etc.

Duane Swierczynski: Expiration Date

As the long-time readers of this blog well know, I've been a fan of Duane Swierczynski's writing almost from the start, ending up translating two of his novels (The Wheelman and The Blonde) in Finnish. Severance Package was a bit of a disappointment for me, as the set-up felt forced and I couldn't get into the characters, even though that has been, I think, Swierczynski's strongest asset: creating believable and likable characters who get into ridiculously tense and violent situations.

But Expiration Date, Duane's next novel after Severance Package... Man, it's good! No wonder he won the Anthony Award for the Best Paperback Original with this. The book deserves its praise. It starts with a bang, a bit like the film noir classic Sunset Boulevard, then proceeds more slowly as we get to know the protagonist (there are no heroes in Swierczynski's world), a bit homey weekly paper staff writer who's just been fired from his job. The events take a wild, wild step from there, one you simply wouldn't guess. And that's not the only wild step in the book, it's a cornucopia of them. And they don't even stop until the end, which leaves you guessing what really happened. But it all makes sense.

Swierczynski blends lots of different genres in Expiration Date: science fiction with a time-travel theme, hardboiled action and serial killer true crime with a decidedly melancholy noir bent. There's also lots of fascinating stuff about Philadelphia's forgotten past. This is probably not something an average science fiction reader would grab, however, as Swierczynski doesn't really dwell on the scientific or even theoretical issues of time-travelling, which is more than fine by me. The action and suspense, noirish atmosphere, good dialogue, great characterization, touching tragedies (for there are them) - these are enough.

If you haven't already read Expiration Date, read it now. I'm so sorry I lost a publisher for my project of translating new American and British noir writing, otherwise this would be high on the to-be-translated pile.

Great opening lines

Pawley watched the rain streak the dirty glass.  He liked the way the droplets started out small at the top, hung there for a moment, raced downward until they met a companion, hung for a shorter time, and then began the long swift plunge to the bottom of the pane, taking everything with them.  Life is like that.  Nobody likes to go down alone.
(from "The Waiting Room" by Charles Runyon, from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine)

(I snatched this from the Rara-Avis e-mail list, from the member Ron Clinton, who probably won't mind. I don't know the publishing year.) 

Kevin Wignall: Alchemy

I was away on a trip for over a week. We were in Sicily, in Cefalú to be exact, and travelled around the island for couple of times, in Palermo for instance. It's a beautiful city, with all its history and nice buildings. We also were at the Etna mountain. I'll probably post some pictures one of these days once they have been downloaded from the camera, but I'll save you from longer ramblings. I'll just say that it's a pity we didn't have enough time to try to find Aleister Crowley's house in Cefalú.

I read three books during the trip (I had four with me, and I started the fourth late last night, and it looks very good indeed: Duane Swierczynski's Expiration Date), one of them being a Finnish crime novel from an author I was requested to do an interview with. One was James Herbert's The Spear (1978), essentially a fun novel about neo-Nazis trying to rule the world with the help from the spear of Longinus, but also a bit outdated, with lots of old-fashioned thriller clichés to somewhat ruin the experience. But the one book rose above all the others: Kevin Wignall's Alchemy, the second installation in his Mercian trilogy. I reviewed the first one, called Blood, here. I seem to have written that Blood will be published in Finland, but that has changed, I'm sorry to say. I'm not sure what the current situation is.

Back to Alchemy. I was a bit confused in the beginning, since - being lousy on plots - I didn't remember much about the first book. Eventually I got into the story and it drew me in with irresistible force. The sadness and melancholy gave way also to other feelings, such as hatred and aggression, as Wignall introduces new characters. There are also some revelations of the most evil character in the book - in the whole universe, it seems - and it shows Wignall's mastery that I was beginning to doubt whether Lorcan Labraid really is worth all the talk, but indeed he is. The book ends in the midst of one of most harrowing reading experiences I've had in a while. Can't wait for the third book, Death, to appear. (And I'm sorry that it will be the final episode in the series.)

One point still, though: there are lots of discussion in the blogs and other venues that crime and other genre writing has deteriorated in the recent decades, say, Alistair MacLean is better than Tom Clancy. I won't dispute that, but Wignall absolutely beats James Herbert hands down. (Well, okay, Herbert isn't a very good example. I did enjoy his Rats, though.) What I mean to say is that sometimes things are just done in a bolder way. Wignall does exactly that.

Aviation magazine fresh off the printers

This one-shot magazine that I've been trying to compile and edit for some years now is finally out. The title means "The Heaven of Adventures" and the magazine features for old-style aviation stories, two old and two new. The new ones are by me (writing as "Jaakko Ensio", the story features dragons and zeppelins) and Petri Laine whose story is also retroish science fiction. The old ones are an old pulp story by Joe Archibald, translated by me, and a Finnish story from during the WWII, by Antero Aulamo, whose relatives have been very kind - this is already a third publication I'm doing with a story by Aulamo! I think there's more to come at some point.

The illustrations throughout the magazine are by Anssi Rauhala who did a marvellous job!

I've been thinking of compiling a whole book of old and new Finnish aviation stories. One of these days...

Friday's Forgotten Book: Patricia Highsmith: Ripley Under Water

I'm not sure if a Tom Ripley novel by Patricia Highsmith is forgotten, but they don't really seem to get the merit they deserve. The books are strangely appealing, even though there's a nihilistic streak to them. It seems to make the books more enticing, though.

In Ripley Under Water Ripley is suddenly threatened by a strange American couple, who seem to know something about Ripley's shady past and some killings he's done. Ripley of course wants to get rid of them, but there's also another reason: he thinks they are irritating, behave badly, disturbing the peace of the French countryside. It's entertaining that Ripley can consider murdering people only for behaving badly in public, not playing by the rules. Ripley only wants to spend time with his beautiful wife, play some music, do some amateur paintings of his own, eat the good food his maid prepares. In Highsmith's world, this can be sometimes achieved only through murder.

Ripley Under Water suffers somewhat from being too slow, especially in the middle when nothing much happens, but the ending is strong.

More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog here.

Edit: of course I meant "appealing", but this went as "strangely appalling" for many days. I noticed it, but couldn't do anything about it as I was travelling!

Tuesday's Ovelooked Film: Jacob's Ladder

I saw this film by Adrian Lyne in 1991 or 1992 when it ran for a week in Tampere, the town where I was living at the time. I saw it twice, first in the press screening and then on the last day before it left town and almost disappeared from my view. I thought it was a very well made drama with a touch of horror and absurd in it, permeated with sadness. I also thought it must've been Lyne's best film.

Then the other day last week I was shopping at the thrift store and noticed a VHS cassette in a box with "Take free" sign on it. I always check these out. This particular cassette turned out to be Jacob's Ladder which I hadn't seen since 1991 or 1992. I watched it and persuaded Elina to watch it with me. She was hooked and also sad in the ending when the guy that Tim Robbins plays makes contact with his dead son. The same with me. I thought the film is still Lyne's best (I haven't seen them all, but enough to be able to say this) and the sadness of the film was still intriguing, alongside with the horror scenes, but now I should say the ending is weak. It seems to take away everything that's been said before.

I won't give away spoilers, though, suffice to say this all has to do with Vietnam. More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Harlan Ellison: Web of the City

Coming in April 2013.

Ray Bradbury in Finland

As I promised, here are some of the Finnish covers for Ray Bradbury's books.

The Martian Chronicles as Marsin aikakirjat (literal translation). Otava 1953. I don't know the illustrator, could be foreign for all I know. This was the first Bradbury published in Finnish in book form; there were some earlier magazine publications, though.

The second edition of Marsin aikakirjat, also by Otava, this time in 1974. The translation is the same, and it's abridged, I'm afraid. Don't know even the illustrator for this. (Mind you, I have these books, but I don't really know where they are. It's easier to find the scans in the web than to scan my shelves.)

I believe this one is by one Piotr Tomaszewski (who was Polish originally, I think), since he did lots of covers for the Kirjayhtymä science fiction series in the seventies. I'm not actually sure, but I think this if from 1975.










Another one from the Kirjayhtymä publishers and also, I think, by Piotr  Tomaszewski. We've never really gone for outlandish pulpy covers here in Finland, have we? This is The October Country, the Finnish translation (and the only printing) is from 1985.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, my favourite from Bradbury's novels, was published here as Painajainen/Nightmare. The publisher was the high-literary Tajo that did lots of new novels and some poetry, Allen Ginsberg for example. There was a second edition of the novel, the same translation (by Jertta Roos) under the title Paha saapuu portin taa (which is almost literal). Did you know the film based on this, directed by Jack Clayton, was banned in Finland? It was shown for the first time in television in 1995.

The Other Heavens AKA Toiset taivaat was one of the short story collections Markku Sadelehto compiled in the nineties. The range of the book is from the old pulp stories to the science fiction classics of the sixties. This one has also "Lorelei of the Red Mist", collaborated with Leigh Brackett (and I, for one, happen to think Brackett does better than Bradbury). The cover is by a friend of mine, Jukka Murtosaari, and the book was published in 1992 by WSOY.










The Early Shadows is supposed to be Bradbury's own idea for another short story collection that came out in 1998, also compiled by Sadelehto. I didn't check the book, but I was told that this was also done by Jukka Murtosaari.

Death Is a Lonely Business, as Kuolema on yksinäinen juttu (very literal translation), was for long my favourite Bradbury. I haven't read it in years, but I just might, one of these days, to see if it will hold up. I'm not sure about the illustrator.

My Ray Bradbury

Don't get me wrong: I love The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 as much as anyone, but to me Bradbury means more as a horror writer and also even as a crime writer.

I read Bradbury's noirish crime novel Death Is a Lonely Business in my teens two or three times almost in a row. I just loved it. I loved the atmosphere oozing from every page of the book. (Gotta admit, though, that I couldn't get through the sequel, A Graveyard for Lunatics.)

And his Something Wicked This Way Comes is a very scary and atmospheric novel, not to mention Bradbury's nasty horror stories. For some reason or another these resonate with me more than Bradbury's actually pretty sentimental science fiction.

By the way, here's an old 25-minute documentary on Bradbury.

And, oh, it came to me I might do a post on some Finnish Bradbury covers, but not now.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Friends of Eddie Coyle

I was finally able to see this after reading about it some twenty-five years ago. I still haven't read George V. Higging's novel the film is based on, but I intend to - one of these days. I know some of you are gonna say "You're looking forward to a treat" or some such, and I'm sure you're right. No question about that.

As the film is pretty great. The laconic style is familiar to anyone who's seen Bullitt, made by the same director Peter Yates, but there's not much talk in Bullitt. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, however, is very dialogue-driven. The characters just talk, talk, talk - and it's all fascinating! The lines don't all make much sense and they don't forward the plot, but it's much greater for that.

The film also trusts that the viewer can detect important plot points for him/herself. There's no one telling what happened or what will happen. In this respect, the final scene may be unnecessary.

The minus point in the movie is the funky soundtrack that's ripped out from a blaxploitation flick. This could well do without a music at all. (Mind you, Dave Grusin's soundtrack is very good, but not in this particular film.)

Here's a New York Times run-down on Higgins.

More Overlooked Movies (later, hopefully) at Todd Mason's blog here.

Edit: seems like Todd hasn't made up his usual round.

The Demars redux

The Demars, the band my kid brother Matias and our cousin Juho had some dozen years ago, seems to have some renewed interest in them and there's been some traffic at Pulpetti, mainly on this link in which I tell the story of the band.

Anders Engwall was complaining - and rightly so - about the absence of downloadable material by The Demars. There's none that I can think of, but someone has downloaded one of the songs on the Veriläiskiä EP, their only record that's been available. The title translates as something like "Round-Shaped Pussy" (no, don't ask).

Friday's Forgotten Book: Margaret Millar

Patti Abbott is hosting a Margaret Millar week at his blog here, and all I have time or patience to do is to link to this earlier posting of mine. I've done some other posts on Millar, here's another.

New Stephen King Novel Coming from Hard Case Crime

JOYLAND to be published in June 2013

New York, NY; London, UK (May 30, 2012) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013.  Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.  JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has never previously been published.  One of the most beloved storytellers of all time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300 million books in print.
Called “the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade” by Neal Pollack in The Stranger, Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and visual style of the pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  The line features an exciting mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most acclaimed crime writers of all time and gripping new novels from the next generation of great hardboiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand pulp style.  Authors range from modern-day bestsellers such as Pete Hamill, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block and Ed McBain to Golden Age stars like Mickey Spillane (creator of “Mike Hammer”), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of “Perry Mason”), Wade Miller (author of Touch of Evil), and Cornell Woolrich (author of Rear Window). 
Stephen King commented, “I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.” 
King’s previous Hard Case Crime novel, The Colorado Kid, became a national bestseller and inspired the television series “Haven,” now going into its third season on SyFy.
“Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book,” said Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime.  “It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time.  Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ ”
JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis, the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for The Colorado Kid.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Last Jaws

The Finnish DVD cover says the title for this is The Last Jaws, but the opening credits say it's The Last Shark. Be it as it may, the original Italian title is L'ultimo squalo. I'm sure this film has other names as well. It was banned in the US for being such a blatant rip-off of Spielberg's Jaws.

This epic falls not very neatly somewhere between a schlock horror thriller and a solid turkey. It's not as camp as it should be, nor as shocking as it should be, so it's pretty mediocre. Some very funny moments throughout, as the YouTube link shows (it's with Spanish dubbing). More Overlooked (is this "overlooked"?) Movies at Todd Mason's blog here.

Joseph Koenig on False Negative

Titan Books - Joseph Koenig on False Negative

New Hard Case Crime writer shares some of his memories of working for the true crime papers. Horrifying stuff.

Patricia Highsmith: The Cry of the Owl

Seems to me that people mostly remember Patricia Highsmith from her Tom Ripley books (which are very good, so I'm not complaining) and Strangers on a Train (would they if Hitchcock hadn't made the film?). Her other stand-alones can also be very effective, and The Cry of the Wolf from 1962 is indeed very effective.

The book's a story about a young man who seems to dislike other people and stalks a young woman who's living alone in a house some miles away from the city. The girl does have a boyfriend, but when she spots the young stalker and responses to him kindly, a very strange relationship starts to develop. It seems for quite a while that this is a rare murderless crime novel, but in the end there's one. I won't say anything more. This is a good example of female noir, the subgenre Highsmith shared with the likes of Margaret Millar, Doris Miles Disney, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, Ursula Curtiss and others. Higsmith might be the cruellest of them all.

I see only just now that there is a rather recent movie based on this. Anyone seen it? Is it any good?

Edit: I was told that Claude Chabrol also made a film out of this, called Le cri du hibou (1987).

Turned 40 last Thursday

Since the thing mentioned in the headline happened last Thursday, I wanted to mention some of the things I've been up to:

- I just compiled and sent to the printers a small booklet that will come out next Friday, when I'm having a ball with some friends of mine (see the photo), it contains 40 items, mainly pictures and photos, from my life and the title means simply: Juri: 40 things.

- last Friday I finished doing layouts for the new anthology I edited: it reimagines the Finland's most famous soldier, the national hero Mannerheim as a pulp hero with a secret life, mission and whole new adventures no one has ever heard of; the book will come out in the sixth of June

- the anthology of old Finnish horror stories is finally coming out, it may be out already as I write this

- I've been trying to gather some stuff for the book on the history of misanthropy, but there have been some complications with the publisher that was supposed to do this

- my project for the history of animated cinema went busted, but I'll be resurrecting it as a book for children of 10-14 years; I don't really know how that will turn out

- I've been editing the manuscript of my coming sleaze novel, called this time Runkkuloma Rivieralla (hardly translatable, as the pun in the title makes no sense to anyone outside Finland), it didn't come out as well as I had wished, but I have hopes that with corrections I can make it work

There are also two fictionmags I'm hoping to put out, the other being the fifth and final issue of my Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories and the other being an aviation mag, with two new Finnish stories, one old Finnish story and one old translated story from a pulp mag. Details later, the title will be The Sky of Adventures (or, in Finnish, Seikkailujen taivas). I've also got some book ideas for the next Autumn, but more on them later.

PointBlank Reader

Anyone remember this? Could've been a contender. The anthology never came about. I wonder if the stories found other places to be published in.

The Raid: Redemption

I saw this new Indonesian action movie earlier today and I can echo Vince Keenan's sentiments when he wrote this piece on his blog. I thought some of the kung fu scenes were a bit too long (for some reason I like it better when a guy tackles 20 other guys, but less when there are only two or three, as in the longest battle scene of the film), but nevertheless this was great entertainment. I liked especially how the important plot points were hidden in quick, snappy dialogue. They didn't develop the things for too long, which is alway good. (Someone actually complained me just yesterday that my novel Jumalten tuho is too quick in introducing the characters. What, you wanted to hear two pages of telling what he eats and did twenty years ago?)

Sheldon Lord: Kept

As you've noticed, I've been reading Lawrence Block's old sleaze novels lately. The quality hasn't been as good as Block's reputation would indicate, but as I'm writing an article about the reprint boom of old sleaze paperbacks, I wanted to try another one: Kept, as by Sheldon Lord (Midwood, 1960). Lord was a pseudonym Block used in his novels (such as Pads Are For Passion, reprinted as A Diet of Treacle), but then again this website says Kept was actually written by Donald Westlake.

I couldn't tell. Kept could be by either one as the prose is smooth and very readable, just as both Westlake and Block can deliver. I read the book in Finnish translation (it was published as Maksettu rakastaja in the mid-sixties by Finnbooks in their short-lived series called Domino) and for all I know, it could be abridged or altered in any other way.


I was rather disappointed in Kept, because I went in looking for a criminous content, but there was none! This could've been a romance paperback, save for the fact that there are some candid sex scenes (candid for their own time, mind you) and that the lead character is a man. The book starts off promisingly, a bit like Postman Always Rings Twice, with a beautiful, young woman picking up a hobo man off the side of the road. But in the end nothing much happens: the boy gets the girl and that's about it. There's some fascinating Mad Men territory being covered here, though: penthouse luxury, new hi-fi stuff, well-cut suits, bossing women around at the office, drinks consumed almost at all times, all that.

But all in all, I'm not sure if I share the Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks conviction this should be reprinted. (But take this with a grain of salt, since I read the translation.)

The great original cover is by Paul Rader.

By the way, here's a link to the Finnish Domino series. Any comments on the books published in it?

Lawrence Block: A Diet of Treacle

This is one of the old Lawrence Block sleaze titles Hard Case Crime has been reprinting. Killing Castro was somewhat disappointing, and so was this. A Diet of Treacle is a ménage à trois between two beatnik guys (one a loser, other a criminal) and a girl who'd like to be a beatnik. The book is not really a crime novel, it's more a novel with a crime. The actual plot starts only after the middle part, but Block writes so smoothly it's not a huge problem. The problem lies with the fact that the plot is too thin after all - and that there's too much of the beatnik slang, with everything being cool, solid or hip. The ending is good, though, real noir stuff.


The book was first published as Pads Are For Passion (Beacon, in the early sixties), but A Diet of Treacle (name snatched from Lewis Carroll) was Block's original title. This kind of information is something I'd really like Hard Case Crime would tell at their website. The book was first published under the Sheldon Lord by-line and I already started reading Sheldon Lord's Kept that was written also by Block. Seems pretty solid (sic) by the first 50 pages.

The Thrill Kill Books: Getting Off and Bad Thoughts

 I finished two books last weekend that shared the same theme: the thrill of a good kill. Both dealt the theme very differently, the other one was very humorous and free-wheeling and the other one developed some real horror out of it.

The latter was Dave Zeltserman's Bad Thoughts that was first published in hardcover by Five Star, but is now available as an e-book. Zeltserman sure knows how to spin a dark tale, as has been witnessed by his earlier books (of which I think Killer is the best - at least of those I've read). And boy oh boy, is Bad Thoughts dark! The killer in Bad Thoughts has a dubious gift of being able to work in the dreams of the people he wants to hurt and seems like there's no escape out of the situation. There are some moments that ask for the suspension of disbelief, but Zeltserman brings the thing to a well-balanced conclusion and does it with verve, through a simple-looking style that maintains the hardboiled noir style that's so familiar to Zeltserman's readers. In the hands of a mediocre serial killer writer, this would merely be a thriller. Now it's something else entirely.

Lawrence Block's hardcover Hard Case Crime outing Getting Off makes the same thing very differently. It tells about a young and attractive woman who kills men to revenge the abuse her father inflicted upon her and does it with great pleasure, first having sex with the men. Block pulls no punches in this tale that develops into a parody of serial killer novels. He turns the clichés upside down: there's nothing inherently bad in getting your joy out of killing people. The book's highly erotic at the same time and it's no wonder Block has used his early Jill Emerson pseudonym in this (though this is much seedier stuff than anything by "Jill Emerson"). There are some moments in the book that feel forced, as a couple of details in the lesbian romance, but I can see Block chuckling to himself while writing those scenes.

The books are very different in depicting the reasons for the thrill kill violence: Zeltserman says there's no reason, the guy was just born broken and it was a pity no one made anything to stop him, Block claims the abuse of the young girl made her what she is today. Seems like the Zeltserman explanation is more fashionable now, as the psychoanalytic-tinged theory of traumatized sexual behaviour has faded out of academic fashion.

Dave Zeltserman's Bad Thoughts has also the distinction of being the first e-book I've read. I loaded the free Kindle Reader on my portable and I've been snatching some free e-books whenever they've been available. As a reading experience I thought it was okay, but something I'd think should be done with the real device. But as of yet, I don't own one. As more and more interesting noir and hardboiled books are coming out only as e-books, getting a Kindle or a Nook or something similar seems something I need to do. Just too pity e-books are so expensive here in Finland.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Blazing Magnum

This is an outrageous Italian crime flick with an insane plot about a police lieutenant's sister who gets killed in a party and some pretty interesting secrets start to unravel. Directed by veteran Alberto De Martino, this boasts some hilariously ridiculous scenes, such as Stuart Whitman beating up three transvetites. The long car chase in the middle of the film is one of the best and one of the stupidest I've seen - yes, at the same time.

If you enjoy stupid films that aren't bad, this is especially for you.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here. (Seems like they are not up yet, as the Americans are not up yet.)

Hard Case Crime cover for James M. Cain

And what a cover it is! Take a look at the never-before-published The Cocktail Waitress here. There's also a chapter to read for a taste.

Lawrence Block: Grifter's Game

I've never actually read much Lawrence Block. I once read one of his later Matt Scudder novels and I really didn't care for it. I'll have to try one of them again. I've liked two of his Tanner novels, even though they are very light. A Bernie Rhodenbarr I had to quit in the middle. And then I've read Killing Castro.

I finally got around to reading the first book Hard Case Crime put out, Block's Grifter's Game that was originally published as Mona (Fawcett Gold Medal 1961). It really shows Block was a good writer even when he was very young (he was 23 when this was published, and I think this is his first, at least under his own name), the text is fluent and very readable. Block's dialogue is paced well and crispy. It's too bad there's so little of it in the middle parts - the narrative turns pretty much into the protagonist's monology. The protagonist is a con man in his late twenties. He's quite sympathetic, though he's a heel of the worst kind, seducing women to to live on their money for days or for months and then dropping them. There are no good people in the world of Grifter's Game, which, combined with the pretty nasty ending, makes this a worthwhile noir novel.

Next off I'll be reading Block's Getting Off and Lucky at Cards. Why? I'm working on an article for a Finnish journal about sex and sleaze paperbacks. And because it's about time I start reading Lawrence Block.

Anthology of men's adventure magazine stories

Bob Deis who organizes a very nice Facebook group called Men's Adventure Magazines and maintains a blog about the same issue, is compiling an anthology of the stories from men's adventure mags, take a look here. The list of writers includes Larry Block, Walter Wager, Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jay Friedman and Mario Puzo.

Fidel Castro assassinated

Hard Case Crime has put out some very interesting reprints and obscurities. Lawrence Block's Killing Castro is probably of the latter kind. It's entertaining, but I'm not sure whether I could call it a forgotten classic. It's a story about five Americanos trying to kill Fidel Castro and trying to get 20,000 dollars as a reward. Some of them are professionals, some of them are idealists, some of them are just waiting around to die and trying to do something useful while dying.

Unlike another blogger said, I didn't find this tightly knit or narrated. It's more like a loose narrative, with just episodes following each other. Some of the episodes are more entertaining than others and Block creates some pretty good characters through dialogue and action. The fate of some of the characters was also entertaining and not something I anticipated.

In a weird narrative technique Block also interweaves the story with the history of real-life Castro and his rise to power. Without those parts the book would be one third shorter and I guess Block just typed them up to fill up the standard book-length. Block's view of Castro and Cuba before him seems pretty solid, though, and even if those bits irritated me, they provided some new information! 

The book is one of Block's rarest early pseudonymous efforts, published as "Lee Duncan" under the title Fidel Castro Assassinated. The publisher was Monarch, the year is 1961, and I think in this case the new cover is much better than the original! 

Orrie Hitt's two-fer

As I've said earlier, the momentum of old sleaze and sex paperbacks has arrived. There are numerous reprints and I think there will be even more of them, which is just great, if the books are as good as the ones in the Robert Silverberg double and in the Orrie Hitt double Stark House Press published last year.

Orrie Hitt was pretty much deemed to obscurity in the 1980's and 1990's, but there were some mentions of his name here and there, for example in Lee Server's book on old paperbacks. It seems his star is on the rise - has actually been awhile -, mainly due to the blogs dedicated to the pulp school of writing and vintage sleaze. Stark House did recently a great double volume of his work, with two long-lost titles The Cheaters and Dial "M" for Man. It's a great read and I recommend it highly.

The Cheaters (Midwood 1960) tells about a young man, pretty much down on his luck, taking a job as a bartender in a seedy bar. The guy falls in love with the gorgeous wife of the bar's fat and obnoxious owner, who wants the guy to take over the bar. Dial "M" for Man (Beacon 1962) is about a TV repair man running his own business in a small town. He also falls in love with the gorgeous wife of the town's big man who in his turn tries to run the TV man down in every way he can.

Both books, published originally as cheap and cheap-looking paperbacks, are about ordinary men in bad situations. They just end up in them, even though they try to shy away from bad stuff. It just happens. They fall in love and start to scheme killing a man, albeit rather reluctantly. This is classic noir stuff, exemplified by this quote from Dial "M" for Man: "Here I was, just a little guy with everything to lose - everything that I had not already lost, that is." You care for these guys, that's why these two little books (Dial "M" for Man is just over 100 pages) have stayed alive.

The other reason for their vitality is Hitt's narrative drive. Even though nothing much happens and the prose isn't very refined or stylish, Hitt really knows how to keep the story moving. You keep flipping the pages, though, as I said, nothing much happens. In this Hitt reminds me of Jason Starr, one of my favourite new noir writers, who also writes about ordinary people and in whose books nothing much happens. Especially in Dial "M" for Man Hitt really keeps the shit piling up on his protagonist.

The endings in both books are bad, though, like Hitt didn't really know how to keep up the dark pessimism of the earlier pages.

New Hammett in the works

Snatched from the Rara-Avis e-mail list earlier today:

Otto Penzler has announced a new book coming from The Mysterious Press: "The Return of the Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett. It will include Hammett's 1935 original story that became the movie "After the Thin Man," his 1938 story for "Another Thin Man" (based on his Continental Op story "The Farewell Murder"), and the brief parody treatment he wrote in 1938 for a fourth Thin Man movie.

The "After the Thin Man" story was previously published issues 5 and 6 of the paperback magazine "The New Black Mask" in 1986 and in the 1987 U.K. paperback anthology "Crime Wave" published by Robinson and edited by Richard Layman and Matt Bruccoli. The other two stories have never been published anywhere.

The book will also include notes by Hammett scholar Layman and Hammett's granddaughter Julie Rivett. Penzler didn't announce an exact publication date, just "late fall."

Lots of overlooked movies

I was going to do this on Tuesday, but I just haven't had time for this kind of thing lately as I've been teaching at the university (creative writing? what do I know about that?) and it seems to take away the energy and everything. So, the thing was that I spent weekend at the cabin with six friends of mine watching movies all the time and drinking booze and not much else. Here's the list of the film we watched, with my starred reviews and Wikipedia and other links. Any of these could be a contender for Todd Mason's Overlooked Movies blog meme!

William Witney: Master of the World (1961) **½ (Vincent Price, Charles Bronson, Jules Verne and Richard Matheson, but still pretty dated)
Allen Baron: Blast of Silence (1961) ***½ (here's my earlier blog post about the film)
Jack Sholder: Alone in the Dark (1982) ** (could've benefited from sticking to the weirdness it starts out with)
Eli Craig: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) *** (quite funny at times)
Mario Bava: Rabid Dogs (1974) *** (pretty suspenseful and nasty [see the photo], stays cinematic even though set inside one car for about 80 % of the running time)
William Klein: Mr. Freedom (1969) ***½ (very funny political oddity, very outrageous and purposefully stupid and in-your-face)
Peter Bogdanovich: Targets (1968) **** (pretty effective and well made early portrait of a mass killer, Boris Karloff is great in this)
Narciso Ibanez Serrador: House that Screamed (1969) *** (slow-moving but effective piece of erotic Euro-horror)
Neil LaBute: Wicker Man *½ (might've been something if Nicholas Cage didn't chew up the scenery so (in)famously, still - or because of that? - very funny)
Elliot Silverstein: The Car ** (always wanted to see this, but isn't actually much, the titular car is quite good)
Antonio Margheriti: Cannibal Apocalypse ** (sounds great, but doesn't amount to much of anything, the beginning in Vietnam is good, though)
Tommy Wiseau: The Room * or ***** (unbelievable narcissistic crap, poorly done, weirdly written and very strangely acted, very, very, very funny almost all the time)

We also started Manos, the Hands of Fate, but it was so goddamn awful we had to stop 15 minutes in. Plus we watched several short subjects, like Jacques Drouin's animations and Tex Avery and episodes of  Family Guy etc. So, you can pretty much gather we had a good time!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Honeymoon Killers

I'm not really sure if this merits as an overlooked movie, since it's quite of a cult classic. Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers from 1969 is what's usually called a "sleeper", a film whose status has grown over the years, a film that pretty much went by everyone during its initial release. And it's also a film whose status really deserves that growth: it's an excellent crime film with lots of dark overtones and with an artistic touch that makes it stand out amongst its contemporaries.

The story's about the real case of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, two unlikely lovers who got each other mixed up in a scam of marrying stupid elderly women and ending up in killing them. It's an ugly story and Kastle doesn't shy away from it. He gives no clues as to what drives these two people, which makes the movie even more chilling. Kastle denies the easy identification from the viewers. This is intensified by a rather Godardesque use of music - Gustav Mahler whom Kastle admired very much.

The film is shot in murky black and white, some of the set pieces are pretty clumsy, but there's also some great photography and mise-en-scène. Kastle shines out the best as a director of actors: all of them give marvellous examples of great acting. The script must've given them plenty to work with, since the characters are full-blown human beings, even in short sequences - they are not caricatures. It makes The Honeymoon Killers touching and very humane at heart, even though on the surface it's a ruthless story about two ruthless - and rather clueless - killers. But I really, really love Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco in this. Marvellous! Excellent! And ahead of their time, I should say. You didn't see this kind of acting in Hollywood films in the late sixties.

Highly recommended, if you ever run across it. More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog.

The last issue of Pulp

Earlier I put the shades on my crime fiction webzine Isku, today I did the same for my non-fiction webzine, Pulp. Here you can read the latest issue that will also remain the last. It's a large issue, with almost 20 articles and reviews. I wrote all of them, save for one review...

Pulp was published in paper from 2003 to 2009, it moved to the web in 2010, but I couldn't find time anymore to do it, so I decided to pull it off. How then could I write almost 20 articles for it? I happen to have a good grant at the moment, but it's entirely for something else, so I'm walking on thin ice here...

So, it's bye-bye, Pulp. (Here you can read my farewell to the printed Pulp from two years back. Seems like I didn't think of going the web-version at the time!) I'm thinking of compiling a collection of articles and essays that were mainly published in Pulp, so all this work wasn't for nothing!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Himmelskibet, part II

I wrote about this silent Danish science fiction movie some weeks ago here. I had a chance to see the whole film at the Tampere International Film Festival a week ago. The film proved to be a disappointment, though the lavish sets made an impression. The space ship looks good and the special effects are nice for 1918. The storyline, though, is pure hogwash: after landing on Mars and meeting the Martians who are vegans and seem to practice a religion that has a feel of Theosophical nature, with its overtones of mutual love and deeper understanding of what people are, the movie starts to drag pretty badly. The ending, with its dramatic return back to Earth, is an improvement, but is sadly not enough. Not all the silent movies are gems. The restored copy looked very good, though.

However, here are more Overlooked Films for your Tuesday pleasure - or rather Wednesday, since it's almost ten o'clock here in Finland as I write.

John Carter of Mars

I recently saw John Carter of Mars, the 3D film version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars novels. The film has been getting rather mixed reviews, but I thought it was entertaining and well-made. The 3D effect is believable and didn't make me nauseous nor give me a headache. The Mars landscape (Marscape?) is very well made and the monsters and other creations look good. (Some people seem to think the tharks don't look at all what they've had in mind, but this is bound to happen everytime someone makes a film out of a loved book.)

I have some reservations, though. The drama is rushed at points, and important stuff is bypassed too fast. The main actors are not very interesting - I already forgot their names -, though Dejah Thoris looks great. (Her transformation into a sword-yielding science woman is a good thing, a trembling Victorian-era princess would be stupid in 2012, though the science bit isn't very convincing. Her sword-yielding and good physics seem to serve up to those nerdy teenagers who like to fantasize about sword-yielding princesses. The Dojah Thoris of the film might not be someone with whom the female audience empathizes with.) The battle scenes are at times confusing and sometimes even not very exciting. The main baddies (the priests of Iss) are over-written.

My main gripe is that the film is too damn serious! Some have said it's stupid and full of fluff, but I thought the movie could've benefited from being funnier, more ironic in the good old swashbuckling manner. John Carter's transformation into a cynical loner seems forced, but than again the cynical anti-hero has become almost a cliché in the recent times. The tharks are not entertainingly hostile anymore, they are just plain hostile. Tars Tarkas's heroics feel imposed upon. The frame story with the Martian priests on Earth also feels forced - it also feels like they're going to do a TV series on this. But with these reservations I'd give the film something like two and a half out of five.

I also reread the first two Mars books by Burroughs, with the new cover illustrations by Ossi Hiekkala (see the photo above). The better of the two is the second one, The Gods of Mars. The story never slows down during the first 100 pages. It's pure wonder of story-telling. The first one, however, seems even haphazard at times. The genre rules of the Victorian time also slow the story down. The magic is still there, though, and Burroughs remains one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Nota bene: I edited the bit about Dojah Theris's transformation, as I happened to read someone else's opinion on that and I got to thinking about it again.

Peer review for my novel

My friend and colleague Jukka Halme read my novel Jumalten tuho / Twilight of the Gods and said thus: "I really liked Twilight of the Gods, it had quite a lot of speed, and amongst all the frenetic violence there was some interesting character development. And who wouldn't like the book with that kind of name gallery?"

Jukka refers to the fact that almost all the characters in the book are named after Finnish pulp fiction and other writers.

Contest for my novel

I'm having a contest over at my Finnish-speaking blog here. I also started posting the original "Jumalten tuho" short story as a serial over there - it was published in 1988, so that's pretty old and awkward stuff!

New eBook publisher, Prologue Books

New eBook publisher that just does good things: Prologue Books that offers only old hardboiled and noir classics. Lots of great stuff: Fletcher Flora, Robert Colby, Charles Runyon, Talmage Powell, Orrie Hitt...

Trailer for Twilight of the Gods

Jumalten tuho from Juri Nummelin on Vimeo.
Here's the trailer my friend Mies Mikkonen did for Jumalten tuho / Twilight of the Gods. He hasn't read the book, but that doesn't show much. The captions (Mies reads them aloud himself!) read pretty much as:

In 1918: the horrors of the Finnish Civil War.

 In 1928: the best kept secret of Christianity is released upon world in Forssa. Can the hungover police officer Tanner save the world?

My Actual First Novel arrived today!

Here I'm sitting on the floor, reading bemusedly the first novel by be that's published by someone else than me. (In real life this is my fourth novel!) Jumalten tuho / Twilight of the Gods / Gotterdämmerung came out from Pikku-idis just last week, I received my author's copies today by mail. All eight kilos of them.

I'm not yet sure what to think of this. Of course I'm happy as can be, but at the same time I'm feeling a bit empty and sad. After all, this book has been over 20 years in the making. It started with a short story (shares the same title as the book) that was published in 1988 in a Finnish science fiction fanzine called Tähtivaeltaja and continued with the sequel to the story some five or six years later. I couldn't find a publisher for the sequel - it was too long to be published as a short story in the same magazine and it wouldn't've made sense to publish it as a book, so I just kept revising it every time I got some extra time - and inspiration, too! I remember writing some of the most shocking scenes to the rhythm of Godflesh's metallic industrial beat. I don't when exactly, but at some point I dropped every allusion to the original short story. Then, after I'd moved to Turku, I shopped it around. Jari Tammi of Pikku-idis was interested in it already in 2003 or 2004, but then he stopped doing business for some reason or another, but he got back to publishing and my book in 2010 and we made a deal of putting the book out. By that time, I'd rewritten the manuscript, but still it required lots of revisions. I'm a fast writer, but a slow reviser. There's lots of stuff in the book I'd like to rewrite even now.

And I think I'd need some time to recover from the shock! Yet I'm preparing a university course I'm starting next week and I just started translating Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature" in Finnish, alongside some other stuff! My son said to me: "You publish too many books, dad", when I showed him Twilight of the Gods and he didn't seem impressed at all. I've gotten used to putting out anthologies and non-fiction books and what not, but this seems more personal - even though the book isn't very personal per se, it's more like an enjoyable romp, not something I've invested my life or personality in. In fact, I'm a bit worried about how that superficiality seems to others.

Here's some more stuff about my book, and for my Finnish readers: do check out my other blog where I'm posting bits from the book that were taken out in the last revisions. There's also a small contest coming, I'm giving three books away!

Fires on the Plain open for submissions

Cullen Callagher, the mastermind behind the great Pulp Serenade blog, is officially soon launching his new website, Fires on the Plain. It's a webzine for western short stories, and Cullen writes:

What are we looking for? Westerns with an edge. Hardboiled. Noir. Gritty. Dark. Tough. Stuff that Harry Whittington, Clifton Adams, H.A. DeRosso, or Brian Garfield would have written. Who else do we love here at Fires on the Plain? Elmore Leonard, Ed Gorman, James Reasoner, T.V. Olsen, Frank Castle, Tom Piccirilli, George Gilman, Bill Pronzini, Richard Telfair — the list goes on.

So, git your writin' gear and start shootin' those, umm, letters? The site looks promising and I have a good trust on Cullen to find some good noirish writing!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Plunder Road

This is apparently a pretty rare late film noir, since it's got only five reviews in IMDb. I loaned this on a VHS cassette from a friend of mine, as I'd always wanted to see it, and while it didn't quite live up to my expectations, it's still a very worthwhile little thriller.

Plunder Road is a caper film, done on a minuscule budget, with limited sets and a small number of players, though the caper in the beginning of the film is quite far away from being minuscule. The film doesn't tell much about the guys who do the caper, but we are made known that some of them are career criminals and former inmates. The movie is about trying to take the loot to a safer place with three different trucks. It's a road movie, but the machines these guys drive are machines of imprisonment, not freedom, like they are in Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise. Likewise, the whole movie is intentionally mechanic, which increases the sense of irony. The players in the movie are nothing but pawns in the game. They struggle to get out, but because they do what they do, they have no chance.

There are some inconcistencies throughout that lessen the impact of the film, though, but not remarkably so. If you get a chance to see this, don't hesitate. All the actors are unknown (at least I didn't recognize the names of the faces), except Elisha Cook Jr., who's remarkably good in this as well. The writer, Steven Ritch, plays himself one of the crooks.

The director, Hubert Cornfield, is a very interesting figure in his own right: many of his few films were based on paperback originals: Lure of the Swamp is based on a Gil Brewer novel, 3rd Voice is based on a Charles Williams novel and The Night of the Following Day is based on a Lionel White novel. Later on he seems to have moved to France.

More Overlooked Films to be had on Todd Mason's blog. (At least I think there will be something. I won't have the time to do this tomorrow, so I did it already.)

Donald Westlake Friday

I'm a bit late on this, but better late than never, right? Here's a link to the Friday's Forgotten Book postings organized by Patti Abbott, all about Donald E. Westlake, to commemmorate the forth-coming publication of Westlake's lost novel, The Comedy Is Finished.

Complete Paul Cain

From Centipede Press. The package looks very nice.

Robert Silverberg's sleaze novels

Old smut paperbacks have been seeing quite of a renaissance in the last couple years: there have been lots of blog posts about them, there are Facebook groups for them and associated stuff (try this) and what's the most important thing, there have been quite a few reprints. One of the most interesting of them has been the collection of Robert Silverberg's two sleaze paperbacks, called Gang Girl/Sex Bum. It's a very good book which I recommend highly, if you're into noirish and nasty little crime stories.

Gang Girl was first published as a Nightstand book in 1959 and it was one of the first of Silverberg's many sleaze novels. It's a juvie book, about a 16-year old (!) girl trying to break into a new gang and making her way up to the top. Some of the sex scenes are downright nasty, especially the gang rape scene that goes on and on. The ending is very noiry and fits the bill. Sex Bum, from four years later, is a better book in my opinion, though Gang Girl is not bad in any sense of the word. Sex Bum, this time a Bedtime book, tells about a young guy living in a hicksville wanting bad to make it into the mob. There are lots of sex scenes, but coupled with the crupulousness of Johnny Price they make a chilling read - this guy feels like he's stepped out from the pages of Jim Thompson of Jason Starr. The ending is very chilling.

These books were written fast to make fast money (and money Silverberg made: he bought a big house in Greenwich Village with the money he got writing these books!), and it shows somewhat. There are some meaningless characters in Sex Bum, and Gang Girl suffers somewhat from being too episodic, but I don't mind, as both books are also immensely readable. As there's also a foreword by Silverberg himself and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, plus a 3-page bibliography of Silverberg's smut books, this books comes very highly recommended. Can't wait for this to arrive.

More stuff about Silverberg's sleaze books here.

Ed Gorman's Cage of Night

I was earlier asking about misanthropy in crime fiction, but now I'm writing about a crime novel that's far from being misanthropic. Actually Ed Gorman's Cage of Night is anything but: it's a humane and warm story about people whose lives are petty and close to miserable, full of search for love that never seems to arrive. Gorman really feels for his characters, they are not just toys in a game. There's also nothing nihilistic about their misery and they don't go on a rampage shooting people or some such. They just try to cope. Sometimes something nice happens, but that's sometimes. Yet the story moves along in a nice pace - I couldn't stop reading, as the cliché goes. It was true this time.

I also admired how Gorman handles the very fine line between psychological suspense and supernatural horror. In the end, nothing is obvious.

This was my first novel-length Gorman, but it won't be the last.

Misanthropy in crime fiction

Question for the group mind: can you think and name any examples of misanthropy in crime fiction, classic, hardboiled or other? I should be writing an essay on the subject, but can't come up with enough examples, though I think Jim Thompson (especially Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me) and Patricia Highsmith (Tom Ripley!) are essentials. What about Charles Willeford? Isn't a book like The Woman Chaser misanthropic?

Someone suggested Andrew Vachss, but he seems to have an ethos that the innocent can and should be saved. There's of course lots of nihilistic neo-nah (the phrase coined by Kevin Burton Smith), but I haven't really sampled those. I'm not sure, though, whether mere nihilism is enough. Misanthropy is more of a philosophical stance, whereas nihilism seems more like a juvenile attempt to be tough and rough.

Any ideas? I'm not really sure if I can do this (the idea wasn't mine to begin with), but if there are enough examples I'm willing to try. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If there's a book on the subject, or even an essay, I'd really like to hear about it.

The Pop History Dig » “Rockwell & Race”1963-1968

Long and interesting article upon which I stumbled and thought to share:

The Pop History Dig » “Rockwell & Race”1963-1968

The scale of the universe

This is so breath-takingly beautiful I burst out crying.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The City of Fear

Irving Lerner is not a household name, though he's been revered by some film noir enthusiasts for a long time, such as Martin Scorsese. Until last Monday night, I'd seen only his late and flawed conquistador film, Royal Hunt of the Sun. Now I've seen also his The City of Fear, thanks to the Finnish Film Archive. (Well, I organized the screening myself, but you know what I mean.) Thanks also to Tapani Maskula, a film critic from Turku, with whom I've talked about film noirs and other B-films for almost ten years now. Tapani was there in the screening to talk about Lerner, who seems to have had a very interesting life.

The City of Fear is a very tight little thriller about escaped convict Vince Edwards who thinks he's onto something when he gets his hand on a small metal cylinder. He thinks there's lots of heroin, but instead it contains radioactive material. Pretty soon he gets sick, but still tries to sell the "heroin". The ending is very ironic, even though there's something unintentionally funny about the radioactive bits in the film - what can you do, Lerner shot the film in seven days with a very low budget for Columbia who needed short films for drive-in theaters? Lerner was before everything else an editor, and this shows in many scenes as they are expertly edited, with verve, rhythm and style, with a touch of Russian montage here and there. Vince Edwards is very good in the lead role: he shows no empathy and you don't actually feel for him, but there's something about the empty stare that Lerner emphasizes with his shooting and editing. The facade reveals absolutely nothing, but the way Edwards fondles the cylinder in his pocket... there's something homosexual about the affair of the man and his fantasies.

I'm hoping to see more of Lerner's films: Murder by Contract (one of the all-time favourites of Scorsese), Edge of Fury (based on American surrealist Robert Coates's novel Wisteria Cottage), Studs Lonigan (from the James T. Farrell novel)... there are some others, too, but they seem to be too obscure. There's one here, take a look. The City of Fear and Murder by Contract are available in the Columbia film noir DVD set.

Tapani Maskula, whom I mentioned earlier, gave his speech about Lerner - I'd really like to read Lerner's biography. Anyone out there willing to do one? Tapani mentioned in the end that The City of Fear is the film that convinced him to become a movie critic.

Other Overlooked Movies here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Tarantula

I don't really know whether Jack Arnold's Tarantula merits the Overlooked Film title, since it's one of the classics of the fifties' horror films and is on the better side as well. The film is never unintentionally funny, the special effects are very good for the time (the film was released in 1955) and the script and the direction are well crafted and tight. There are not many empty scenes. Yeah, well, okay, you might say it's funny when there's a giant tarantula spider roaming the deserts of Arizona, but no one sees it, except those whom the thing devours. Well, it's Arizona, I don't think there are that many people.

I've heard some good things about Jack Arnold's film noirs, The Tattered Dress and Outside the Law. Anyone seen them? The same goes for Arnold's western, The Man from Bitter Ridge.

More Overlooked Films here.

New Finnish covers for ERB's Mars books

The small publishing house Into is bringing new editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars books in Finnish this Spring. The books have been out-of-print in Finnish for almost thirty years and some of the old editions command quite high prices.

My friend Ossi Hiekkala did great covers for the first two, see the link here. I think they are up there with the best.

Nympho librarians

Here's another great link to a site collecting all sorts of porn books about librarians. No cover photos, though.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Himmelskibet

Himmelskibet is a big-budget Danish science fiction film made in 1918. It has big sets and lots of extras. See for yourself. This is a longish clip from the Marx expedition in the film, with the music by the Norwegian Kolar Goi.

This came up in the movie quiz our team kept. One of the members of our team had made three questions about obscure Nordic horror and science fiction films (Reptilicus, anyone?) and I wanted to make it four. After some Googling, I found this. It's a very nice clip and you simply want to take a look at it, even though it's not the whole film. 

More Overlooked Films here. 

Vast archive of pulps on-line

Here's a link to the site that has lots of different magazines for on-line reading, with lots of pulp magazines included: Argosy, Weird Tales, Western Adventures, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Ranch Romances, Detective Fiction Weekly...