Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Innocents (1961)

I just saw the new haunted house film The Conjuring. I thought it was pretty good, frightening even, save for the ridiculous ending with all the Catholic Christian cliches about the Satanic evil in the world thrown in. I even wrote a review of The Conjuring saying that the film might draw a comparison with some of the classic ghost films à la The Innocents by Jack Clayton. The director of the film, James "Saw" Wan, showed remarkable restraint compared to his earlier films, and some of the scenes in The Conjuring are quite chilling.

I shouldn't've said that, since I hadn't seen The Innocents! I just watched it for the first time last night, and I must say that The Conjuring is pretty far from away from Clayton's film in restraint. In The Innocents, we are merely being shown two figures from a distance. There are no tricks James Wan is fond of, it's all in the mind. And we are never really told whether the ghosts of the film are true or whether they are imagination of the protagonist, the tutor (played by Deborah Kerr). The film might be even more scarier of that.

Beware of a slow pace! This is not your typical fast ride through nightmares all the horror films are now bound to be.

Based on a Henry James novella "Turn of the Screw". Now that I mentioned that, I might add that I finally finished the translation of H. P. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" and sent the final edits to the publisher yesterday. Another one goes down!

Here's what Lovecraft writes of James's story: "In The Turn of the Screw Henry James triumphs over his inevitable pomposity and prolixity sufficiently well to create a truly potent air of sinister menace; depicting the hideous influence of two dead and evil servants, Peter Quint and the governess Miss Jessel, over a small boy and girl who had been under their care. James is perhaps too diffuse, too unctuously urbane, and too much addicted to subtleties of speech to realise fully all the wild and devastating horror in his situations; but for all that there is a rare and mounting tide of fright, culminating in the death of the little boy, which gives the novelette a permanent place in its special class." (Hey, no one said Lovecraft is easy to translate!)

More Overlooked Movies here.

Finnish fantasy free for Kindle

Jeff VanderMeer supports Finnish new weird writing giving away free e-book copies of famous Finnish fantasy writer Leena Krohn's short novel Tainaron. Check it out, it's a great book, full of wisdom, beauty and marvel. epub format also available.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Livia Reasoner: The Vampire Affair

I won this book from Livia Reasoner, James Reasoner's wife, some years ago in a blog or a Facebook contest. I got around to reading it only now, but luckily it still seems to be available as an e-book, though I believe these Silhouette books have a short shelf life.

This is the only paranormal Silhouette book Livia has written, but I don't know why this is, since The Vampire Affair is a solid book, fast-paced thriller with enough vampires, romance and erotic love. It's a clearly work of a professional. The main characters are a young and eager female journalist and a mysterious millionaire who turns out to be a vampire hunter and a bit of a vampire himself. This may sound cliched (and indeed many parts of the book are), but Reasoner writes deftly and keeps the story running. The book is quite short, so the cliches don't get in the way. In the end Livia throws some American Indian mystique in the mix, and it works, too!

The Vampire Affair could've also easily started a series, since both major characters could well play leading parts in coming books as well. Here's hoping it will happen!

More Forgotten Books here on Patti Abbott's blog.

Kevin Wignall's Dark Flag finally out

Remember Kevin Wignall's Dark Flag? I had a hand in publishing the book in Finnish translation some years back as Lipun varjo ("The Shadow of the Flag"). The book wasn't actually a success in Finland, even though it's a very good novel, and it vanished quickly. To this day, it hasn't been published in English language, but finally it's available as an e-book from Amazon. I really advise you to pick it up. This isn't one of those sloppily written and edited e-books I was talking about earlier.

(And thanks for comments on that post, I'll reconsider my stance.)

Negative reviews on e-books?

I've been reading some stuff on my Kindle, mainly stuff I've picked free from Amazon, new gritty and noirish crime fiction from both side of Atlantic. I've liked a lot some of the stuff I've acquired, for instance Juaréz Dance by Sam Hawken and Tony Black's bleak novella The Storm Without (of which I didn't do a blog post). I also liked Lawrence Block's short story "Keller on the Spot" quite a bit.

But I've recently dropped two novels by new noir writers I was reading on Kindle. The other one was sloppily written and edited, and the other one had ridiculous characters and the police work depicted in the book wasn't believable. I was going to post a review of the books, but then I got to thinking I wouldn't be doing much of a service to the writers and their publishers (the other one of the two writers has just a book out from a small publisher working actively in the neo-noir business). Then I got to thinking that as a critic that's just what I should be doing: pointing out what these writers and their publishers are not doing very well and keeping readers out of the bad or mediocre stuff, but then I got to thinking again and then I decided not to post.

What do you think? I'm really an outsider in these circles, since I'm essentially a foreigner to all American, British and Scottish writers mining this area, but then again, someone might benefit from my point of view.

The Counselor

Here's the trailer for Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy's film The Counselor, coming next October. I'm not really that keen on Scott, but this looks kinda promising.

Pulp writer Earl Peirce Jr.

Doing my first book, Pulpografia (2000), I encountered one or two Finnish translations of short stories by one Earl Peirce Jr. His name may have been written "Pierce" in the Finnish magazines. I didn't find any info on him, except that he wrote for Weird Tales and later on crime pulps, such as Detective Tales. I googled him earlier today (for a purpose I'll reveal later) and found out this post on a genealogy site. Someone has really done good work on Peirce, a really little known writer!

I put up Peirce's tentative bibliography here in my bibliography blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Godzilla (1998)

Roland Emmerich's reworking of the famous Japanese monster wasn't a critical success (I think it wasn't a success even commercially), but my kids just saw it and they liked it. I believe my son (who's soon to be 9 years old) loved it. He also loves the Jap movies of which he's seen five, including the original one. 

There are some moments I also happen to like ("love" might be too strong a word here): Godzilla's leap into Hudson River, the drive into Godzilla's mouth, when Godzilla fools the submarines, the sequence at Madison Square Garden with the Godzilla babies. I also like Jean Reno's hardboiled character. My son says: "The best moment is the ending." He always feels sympathy for the baddies in the film when they fall. 

More Overlooked Movies here. 

Interview with Ed Gorman

Check out this good interview with Ed Gorman at The Rap Sheet.

Steve Brewer: Bank Job

I just finished this hardboiled thriller reminiscent of Elmore Leonard's work the other day. It was the first book I read by Steve Brewer, but I liked it well enough to read more of his books later on.

Bank Job (2005) is one of those books that start rapidly, race along with a good speed and develop into a satisfying climax. Three low-life criminals are on a crime spree doing stupid things. One of them gets hit by a whiskey bottle during an attempt to rob a liquor store. The guys end up in a lonely house with an old couple living in it. The old guy of the house has a secret up his sleeve, and much action and mayhem ensue. There's plenty of violence that really hurts, and there are also some sudden twists and turns.

Brewer creates memorable characters with just few touches, a bit of dialogue, descriptions of how people move, act, keep a book in their hands. It's quite nice that the lead character is someone over 60. The young hoodlums are also depicted very nicely, they are fully human though they are quite worthless and almost evil. The plot moves on with a nice pace and slows down only in the last 20 or 30 pages. Comes highly recommended, even with the very stale front cover.

Edit: Oops! I meant to publish this on Saturday, but I accidentally pushed the Publish button and can't take it out anymore. So it's two book posts on the same day, but I don't really think anyone minds. 

Friday's Forgotten Book: Sébastien Japrisot: The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun

Still suffering from a bad back, I finished lying on a sofa the French writer Sébastien Japrisot's thriller La Dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil (1966). I had a beat-up copy I'd found somewhere cheap, and upon noticing I already have a better copy I decided to throw this away - most certainly something I wouldn't normally do.

This is a very good crime novel. I once read somewhere that if you're a male writer, don't try a woman's point of view (unless you're Cornell Woolrich). Japrisot does it and does it very well. Of course some of the stuff in the book depicting a young woman's sexual and social disorientation is dated, but they didn't overrun the reading experience. The book reminded me a bit of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, which I liked to a certain point, but I also got weary of its longevity. Not so with Japrisot's novel, as it clocks at about 250 pages. The book starts in the middle of the woman's noir nightmare of which the characters and the reader can't possibly fathom what's going on. Japrisot likes to toy with the reader's expectations and this is far more exciting and surprising than Gone Girl. Japrisot also writes in a very French style that's both hypnotic and diffuse at the same time. This is a very engaging book and although the prose isn't the most straight-forward one, you can't help but read the book in one sitting.

The book was made into a British movie in 1970 with Samantha Eggar and Oliver Reed. Haven't seen it, though. Seems like there's no decent DVD on it. Here's a good blog post on the film.

More Forgotten Books coming up here.

Edit: I forgot to mention it, but I read the Finnish translation from 1967. The title means "The Woman in the Car". Guess this was clear to anyone. Crime Club (with the nice logo) was a quality paperback series from the large Finnish publishing house Otava back in the late sixties. 

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Hooked Bear (1956)

Suffering from a bad back I watched some VHS tapes with old animations in them and spotted this Disney cartoon previously unknown to me. I don't know how this has happened - the explanation is perhaps that I've seen some of the Humphrey the Bear cartoons, but forgotten all about them. Nonetheless, this was a pretty entertaining little film, directed by Jack Hannah.

 More Overlooked Films here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Cause for Alarm (1951)

I caught this little film noir on a Finnish television just the other night. It's a slightly enjoyable suspense story starring Loretta Young as the disturbed housewife of a crippled man (Barry Sullivan) who begins to think Young is trying to kill him for his insurance money.

There are some implausibilities in the plot, and Loretta Young's behaviour when she tries to get back the letter his husband sent to the district attorney is pretty much all over the place, but this still fits in with the phenomenon I've dubbed "female noir". I think "domestic suspense" used by Sarah Weinman in her upcoming anthology is actually better for this. The images of Loretta Young under her sociopathic and bitter husband are pretty disturbing.

That said, the ending of the film should've been infinitely stronger. The director was Tay Garnett, the screenplay was by Mel Dinelli, who specialized in film noir. See also the Wikipedia article for the film.

More Overlooked Movies here.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Dean Koontz: Shattered (1973)

I've never read much Dean Koontz and my impression of his later and longer work (see here) has not been very good, but Shattered proved out to be short, gripping and brisk. It's one of Koontz's early books, published initially under his K. W. Dwyer pseudonym (and later on published as Dean Koontz), and still it tells a full-bloodied tale of full-bloodied people.

The premise is not very different from Richard Matheson's and Steven Spielberg's Duel which is two years senior, so Koontz may have had it in mind. Shattered also differs from Matheson's work in that the chase is personal in tone. A dark, mysterious van is behind two drivers, a young boy and the boyfriend of his older sister, who's a father figure to the kid. They don't know who drives the van, but Koontz shows he's a menace in the chapters narrated through the mysterious driver.

The ending is a bit too abrupt and there are some characters of which I didn't know whether they really were necessary. But Shattered is still a
suspenseful book that feels for its doomed characters.

This came out in Finnish in 1994 from Book Studio under the title Varjostaja. See the Finnish cover here.

More Forgotten Books here.

Joseph Rosenberger

When I wrote my first book, Pulpografia (2000), I decided to include some of the better-known men's adventure writers from the seventies and eighties. The genre doesn't do much for me, and Joseph Rosenberger's Richard Camellion books proved out to be the worst of the worst. I can see where the later cult fame rises from, but sometimes I have hard to see beyond those qualities.

Here's a personal letter from Rosenberger, who seems like he wasn't a very nice guy. Some quite interesting takes on politics and race and also some stuff on publishing. If you're into men's adventure genre in general, take a round in the Glorious Trash blog, you might find lots of interest. Here's also an interview with Rosenberger in the same blog.

New book out!

I have a new book out. It's a collection of werewolf stories by Finnish writers (mostly new, but with two old ones thrown in), edited by me. It looks dandy with its 340 pages and a nice cover by Jukka Murtosaari. The title means  "The Dark Side of the Moon", which is the title of Johanna Sinisalo's great story in the book. Here's more info on the book (in Finnish).

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Multiplicity (1996)

I didn't much like Groundhog Day when I saw it, but I've come to realize the film enjoys a bit of a cult following nowadays. I haven't seen it since, but not long ago I read an interesting essay on Ramis's work, so I decided I should dip into an old VHS cassette I found some years ago from the trash bin containing Ramis's later Multiplicity.

Multiplicity is a bit like Groundhog Day, with its idea of cloning a person to make life easier. Having many Michael Keatons is not far away from Bill Murray living one particular day all over and over again. Both films are amiable, but contain some sharp notes on the middle-class way of life. The basic situation in Multiplicity allows many amusing moments and at times the films is a lot like a classic screwball comedy. All in all Multiplicity is an entertaining film, but I'm not sure whether I'd watch it again. Andie McDowell is not very interesting as the female lead, and the overall result is a bit too sweet to my taste.

A word of warning: if you don't like Michael Keaton, you probably won't like Multiplicity. I'm not one of his fans, but I could stand him in this, even when there were four of him on the screen.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Jack Williamson: Darker Than You Think

I'm writing this before I've finished the book, so I don't know the outcome and how it will play out, but here goes nevertheless.

Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think (published first in 1940 in Unknown, then in book form in 1948) is a werewolf classic and as such it seems dated now, though it must've been pretty ground-breaking at the time, for all its realism and psychological acuteness. Williamson even strives for a plausible explanation of lycanthropy, but the explanation of course seems dated now.

The title of the book is a lot like many film noirs with its emphasis on dark, and sure enough one could see this as a film noir, especially with the red-haired femme fatale of the book, April Bell. The hero of the book, Will Barbee, is an ordinary sap, hacking newspaper stories and drinking whiskey and waking up to a nightmare of his life.

More Forgotten Books here at Patti Abbott's blog. There's an Elmore Leonard week, but I wasn't able to participate in that.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi (1978)

I watched Ralph Bakshi's early animated version of Tolkien's saga with my son, who's on a Tolkien binge, having watched Peter Jackson's film twice (or even thrice!). I could see he wasn't thrilled, but he managed through. Maybe he was interested in the differences between the versions.

I'm not sure whether I was, since I found Bakshi's film boring, clumsy and pretentious. I'd seen it before (on big screen), but the film proved to be duller than I remembered. I don't really know what one gets out of it, if one hasn't read Tolkien's book (or seen Jackson's version!), since Bakshi's film is lacking in good, solid narration. I don't know whether anyone seeing the film will care much for the faith of the Ring or the characters.

I promised my son I would try to seek the unofficial Bass-Rankin sequel to Bakshi's film, but Lord help from finding it!

More Overlooked Movies here at Todd Mason's blog.

Richard Matheson RIP

I'll probably be the last blogger to register the death of Richard Matheson, but he was so influential and so good, I can't let it to unnoticed.

I'm just dropping off to do some vacation-time, so here's only a short list of some of his work I've really liked:

Duel: both Spielberg's movie and Matheson's original short story plus his screenplay.
I Am Legend: unbelievably suspenseful, yet tight and relentless, very short (only some 150 pages), but still packs quite a punch, a model for many vampire and zombie novels and films to come.
Someone Is Bleeding: the original novella (later published in book form) reprinted in the great anthology American Pulp, goes to show Matheson was a very good noir crime writer.
short story "Gunsight" (Dime Western, 1951), published in Finnish as "Sokean sheriffin kaupunki" (meaning "The Town of the Blind Marshal"): hypnotic Western story of a blind hero.