Swedish paperback cover for Edward Aarons

I found this book in a trash bin and decided I should at least salvage its illustrated cover.

The book, originally Assignment - Treason is the second one to come out in Edward S. Aarons' Assignment series that took its protagonist, Sam Durell all over the world. The books are at least serviceable, if nothing great to my mind. The Swedish edition came out in 1959 from Wennerbergs Förlag, translated into Swedish by Margareta Sahlström. The illustration is by Mitchell Hooks. It wasn't originally meant for this book. "Förräderi" means "treason" in English.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Battle Beyond the Stars

Science fiction can be pretty stupid at times, especially olded science fiction, the stuff with zap guns and space ships. But it can also be pretty entertaining, as proves the Roger Corman-produced Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) that I saw last night on a 35 mm film. I'd seen it before on television, but never on big screen.

At core, the film is indeed stupid: John Saxon plays a maniacal tyrant, who wants to destroy or enslave whole planets. One of the planets, Akir, wants to fight, and a young man is sent to find some hired guns to help them. Battle Beyond the Stars is a riff on The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven (with even one of the actors of the latter film, Robert Vaughn recreating his role as a lone gunman), but more essentially it's a Star Wars copy, with lesser space fights and less fictional mythology. The film races along fast, but the scenes are loosely jointed. The battle scenes are clumsy and a bit confusing at times.

But on the good side are many things: John Sayles' funny and clever script with lots of sexual innuendo that's largely missing from George Lucas' Star Wars, many nice actors in bit parts (Sam Jaffe, George Peppard, Vaughn), Sybil Danning in a goofy role as a female warrior, and good music from Howard Shore. Sayles' script shows his feminism also in the female computer of the hero's space ship, she's clearly an grumpy older lady who takes no shit from no one. Too bad she doesn't make it in the final battle.

Though nothing great, Battle Beyond the Stars was a good-humored film and I left the cinema grinning to myself. And oh, by the way, I thought I spotted Sayles playing one of the doll-like androids in Sam Jaffe's space station, but IMDb doesn't mention him.

Huge amount of links to other reviews on Todd Mason's blog here.

Sarah Weinman on Benjamin Black, Chandler and other literary brands

Just a sidenote: this article by Sarah Weinman is already two years old, but it caught my attention only just now, when I noticed Weinman post it on her Facebook page. It's a very intriguing piece, you should check it out. Lots of stuff I didn't know and also lots of stuff that piques my interest and fascination.

My book on Finnish Westerns

Sorry for the absence, folks. I've been working my ass off and writing my book on Finnish Westerns, but it's finally ready and being sent off to the printers. The book turned out pretty huge, clocking at 370 pages in its final version. You can see why I haven't been blogging - and not doing pretty much anything else either. This took me at least ten years from the first idea, and the actual writing took at least four years - but of course I did some other books in the interim.

I'm too tired at the moment to write more fully about the book and its contents, for now it's enough that I post the great cover by Timo Numminen. The book is out in May.

The book will be accompanied by an anthology I also compiled, with twenty or so Finnish Western short stories from the 1820s on up to this day. I'll post about it as well later.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Mikey and Nicky (1976)

I'd read of this little gem of a crime film a long time ago, but always failed to see it. I once had the Finnish VHS published in 1989, but I couldn't watch it, since the picture ratio was so wrong, my eyes started to bleed. Now I finally had a chance to see it on screen, and boy, was it good! Mikey and Nicky was ahead of its time as a crime film and hasn't aged as some other crime films of its era have.

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk play minor gangsters in the movie. In the beginning we see the freaked-out Cassavetes in a sleazy hotel room, seemingly afraid of everything. He thinks other gangsters are trying to kill him, and Falk offers to help him. It becomes a bit of an odyssey through night-time streets, dirty joints and movie theaters. Ned Beatty plays the hired killer who doesn't seem to get anywhere on time. There's a bit of a surprise twist near the end, but more essential is the actual ending of the film, very poignant and touching, with a nice touch in the dialogue.

The writer and director Elaine May let Cassavetes and Falk improvise their scenes (at least partly), and this brings life to the characters that otherwise might be stock. There's warmth, energy, fear, abruptness, violence and jerkiness to these guys, and while they are not very likable, they feel very real.

The improvisation led to film being burned, which made the studio angry, and then Elaine May sat on the results for three years and trying to bring the thing together, but then the studio decided otherwise, and the end result isn't what May had in mind. I don't know whether we'll ever see May's version of Mikey and Nicky. (The Finnish version, seen here after a five-year break in 1981, is slightly shorter than the original American print.)

Someone has said this is the best film ever produced in Hollywood directed by a woman. I don't know if this is the case anymore, but it may have been. At least Mikey and Nicky is different and interesting. Here's Jonathan Rosenbaum on the film.

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog. (Hopefully.)

PS. Oh, I'd written about this and the goddamn Finnish VHS earlier.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Jesuit Joe (1991)

I'd seen this ultra-rare French northern film back in the day, in 1992 actually, and I saw it twice, even though it made only a short round in Finnish cinemas. I'd never seen it again, but for some reason or another it had stuck to my mind and having an opportunity to see it again on 35mm film (okay, I had a hand in organizing the screening) I jumped the wagon.

Saying "ultra-rare" means that Jesuit Joe has only been released on VHS in French with no subtitles and on DVD in French with no subtitles. It's never been shown in Finnish television and before this it was never shown on the Finnish Film Archive screenings. It seems from IMDb that Finland was the only country where the film was shown originally beside France. So not many have seen it. It's available on YouTube, but they have only the cropped VHS copy without any subtitles.

The copy on YouTube is in French, but the copy I just saw was dubbed in English, so the producers at least tried to make this international. The film is based on Hugo Pratt's 1980 graphic novel with the same title and Pratt also was writing the screenplay, but they did some extra and not so necessary changes here and there. The original graphic novel, for example, has no vulture buzzard giving a voice-over narration, as in the film. It works at times, at times it doesn't.

The whole film suffers from the same problem: at times it works, at times it doesn't. The aerial scenes of the wintery Canadian landscape (the film was shot in Canada) are breath-taking, but the actors are pretty bad almost throughout. The screenplay has some dubious explanatory scenes or dialogue, which are not necessary. The director, Olivier Austen, has done only some unit managing in some other films beside this, and it shows. There are some very clumsy scenes here and there. Even the soundtrack shows the same undecisiveness, with hard-rock themes suddenly bursting out.

Yet there's something intriguing about the unrelenting story about the half-Indian Jesuit Joe killing mercilessly those he doesn't like or approve - or not killing. Take a look if you have the chance - or can speak French and can suffer through the bad VHS copy of YouTube.

Todd Mason doesn't seem to be gathering any links to other Overlooked Film posts, but here's his blog anyway.

Possibly British comic needs ID

Friend was asking whether anyone knows the artist behind this possibly British series of comics. It was published in Finnish in the 1950s as Esa and Eenokki, so possibly it was something like Eazy and Enoch (but most possibly not). Can anyone help my friend here?

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

I just saw this little thriller - if that's what you could call it - the other day and decided to blog about it. The film received with good reviews here in Finland and, I believe, elsewhere in Europe as well, but I don't know how largely it was seen in the US. (Wikipedia says it had a limited release, but it's out on DVD and possibly available on Netflix and other venues.)

The film has a quirky title, but you shouldn't worry about that, since it's a pretty well done drama of a young woman, Martha (played by Elizabeth Olsen), who's gotten herself mixed up with a sect leading a reclusive life somewhere in the mountains. John Hawkes plays the leader of the sect with charisma. He's not given any background, so the viewer will have to fill up the blank spaces him/herself. The leader looks and feels interesting, yet he's there only to satisfy his own sexual needs: he gets to have sex with all the newcomers. He tells the women the act of sex starts the purifying process. The young woman can't take the abuse anymore and takes a hike. She hides herself in her sister's house, but she can't leave the past behind her. The sister and her husband seem helpless and don't really know what to do, and Martha won't tell them what has really happened in the two years she was away.

Directed by debutante Sean Durkin, this is a quietly disturbing thriller with almost no scary moments. The ending is very disturbing. Highly recommended, though not for those who seek fast action and thrills.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Luis Buñuel: The Young One

(I'm blogging again! I really don't have time for this, but I just can't let this one go.)

Surrealist film-maker Luis Buñuel has for long been one of my favourite directors, but in the recent years his stature in my eyes has even grown. I've really liked, even loved, some of his films I've seen recently, even though I'd've seen them before. One example is one of his Mexican melodramas, Èl, of which I wrote here. A more recent example is The Young One (1960), made in Mexico in English, with American actors. It was called La Joven in Mexico, which I believe means "the virgin", and it's only fitting the film's Finnish title is Neitsytsaari, meaning "The Island of Virgins" or "The Virgin Island". I won't go into the plot and its details, the Wikipedia entry will suffice. I just saw this film on screen on 35 mm film, and though I'd seen it earlier, I hadn't really realized what a magnificent little film it is.

It's a very current film tackling issues of racism and sexual abuse. You know, we also have this thing called hate speech in Finland, and it's getting very tiresome and worrisome at the same time. In swift dialogue, Buñuel reveals the speech patterns the racist uses: if the rapist is a white man, the woman is to blame, if the rapist is a black man, kill him. There's wonderful irony in the end: everything seems to be well, but the black man is still running from his hunters and the white man still can carry on raping the 12-year old girl. The priest, who at first seems to fight against abuse and racism, has to make a deal with the white man in order to get the black man to escape. This is no casual irony, it's a strike in the white heart of bourgeoisie.

Yet The Young One is also fluent entertainment. There's not much violent action, but Buñuel knows how to keep the story racing along. This is something many of his experimental colleagues don't know. The noir and western stalwart Zachary Scott is mighty unlikable, yet weirdly human as the white man in the lead. Key Meersman is captivatingly innocent in her almost only role. The film was written by Buñuel and Hugo Butler, who had earlier been blacklisted because of his communist sympathies. The film could indeed be too much for people like Donald Trump.

More Overlooked Films here, when they show up. (Edit: I guess Todd has had something else going on, since nothing has shown up.)

Happy Cthristmas!

I haven't been blogging much lately, but it's only due to two facts: I've been swamped with work and family matters (you might remember we have a 10-month old kid in our house), and I also haven't really been reading any books I should be blogging about. I've been doing a book on Finnish literature, and while there might be some interest in it among my followers, it all comes down to the fact that I've had really little extra time in my hands. I've even been thinking about calling it quits, but I don't want to do that. Blogging here at Pulpetti has brought me new friends and even professional contacts (hey, I wouldn't have been publishing Kevin Wignall were it not for Pulpetti!), and I'm thinking there might be some in the future.

I've also been doing another book: I've compiled a collection of Finnish Cthulhu mythos stories, mostly new, but also with four previously published stories. The book will come out next Spring. I've been at it for almost two years, so it also took some extra energy. But the cover is really nice, as you can see. The title means "The Guardian of the Forbidden Book". I sent the finished manuscript with the foreword and all yesterday to the publisher, so you can see I'm relieved and can finally say: "Happy Christmas!"

Erik Munsterhjelm: A Dog Named Wolf

Anyone read the book? It's a book published in English in 1972 as A Tale of Wolves, Dogs and Trappers in the Canadian Wilds, and as A Dog Named Wolf in 1977. Erik Munsterhjelm was a Finnish writer, who emigrated to Canada in the 1920s and lived there for a dozen years hunting and prospecting gold. Later he came back to Finland and wrote a three-series book of memoirs set in Canada; later on he published four adventure books for young readers set in the same regions. Munsterhjelm returned to Canada in the late 1940s and lived there for the rest of his life. I'm writing on him, but can't get my hands on A Dog Named Wolf. What I'd really like to know is that if it's a fictional book or a memoir and if Munsterhjelm himself is in the lead. If it's a novel, it never came out in Finnish and I'll have to get my hands on it. (There are plenty copies on Abebooks, but I need the info quicker.)

Mind you, there's also a book by Munsterhjelm called The Wind and the Caribou, it's an English translation of one of his memoirs. I thought it was pretty wonderful, you should seek it out if you're interested in the so-called Northern genre.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Morons from Outer Space (1985)

Some time ago I watched a virtually unknown movie by Mike Hodges, the director of such masterpieces as Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Now I watched another one, but of this I'd heard before. Morons from Outer Space (1985) was shown in Finnish cinemas, so I'd seen ads of it and I even remember a friend of mine discussing it.

I bought the now rare movie on VHS and my viewing of it may not have been the best quality, but I still think I got a good picture of what the film was doing and how well it was accomplished. The morons of the title are four foul creatures travelling somewhere in space and somehow ending up on Earth. One of them is played by Mel Smith, amiable comedian, who performed a lot with Griff Rhys-Jones, who plays a reporter in the film. Jimmy Nail merits a special mention as one of the aliens. Morons from Outer Space aims for parody (there are references to 2001, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and satire - the space morons end up being celebrities, though they don't know or even understand a lot. They do speak good English, though, which is a joke unto itself. The film is a bit wacky and a bit quirky, but never funny enough. Not enough good jokes, not enough crazy slapstick comedy, not enough witty ideas. The satire is also a bit obvious, maybe dated.

The film bombed at the box office and probably made sure Mike Hodges's career will never rise to the heights of Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Mind you, though, Croupier from 1998 is a pretty good neo-noir, and Black Rainbow, made in 1989, was occasionally very good (see the link above). He made some TV stuff between those two, but his film career has been erratic and very mixed.

More Overlooked Films here.

Gil Brewer in Wikipedia, at long last!

Remember when I noted that Gil Brewer didn't have a Wikipedia article to his name? Now he does. (I didn't do, though I set out to do it.) It's still a stub, but it's a start.

There must be dozens or even hundreds of paperback crime and western writers who have no Wikipedia articles, someone should start making up a list of those who don't have (I just noticed the other day that Giff Cheshire doesn't have one). Maybe I should do it?

Science fiction westerns

I'm editing a collection of my writings on genre and pulp literature. Included is an essay on horror and sci-fi western hybrids. I'd added some comments in English at the end of the text, possibly snatched from the Fictionmags or other e-mail list discussions, but I won't be incorporating them into my essay (or at least all of them), it's long enough as it is. But here they are, for your reading pleasure:

Did you ever read FOR TEXAS AND ZED by Zach Hughes? (Popular Library, 1976) It's my all time favorite in the SF-about-Texas sub-genre, and it's a pretty good story to boot!

From the jacket copy:

"Spacemen from Texas on Earth had settled this remote planet centuries ago. While the rest of the galaxy was being divided between two vast warring empires, Planet Texas preserved its
independence, created its own unique civilization, developed its own advanced technology. But now all that Planet Texas was and all that it believed in were threatened, as the super-powers of space moved in for the kill."

William Rotsler's space western novel (THE FAR FRONTIER?)?

Eric Frank Russell, "The Illusionaries," PLANET STORIES 11/51, reprinted in Andre Norton's anthology SPACE PIONEERS.

David Drake's Hammer Slammer spinoff, The Sharp End, though set in a galaxy far far away, was structured along the lines of Sergio Leone's western, Fistful of Dollars.

PERTWEE, HIRAM
Julian F. Grow:
The Fastest Gun Dead (ss) If Mar 1961
The 7th Annual of the Year’s Best S-F, ed. Judith Merril, Simon &
Schuster 1962
The Sword of Pell the Idiot (nv) F&SF Apr 1967
The Starman of Pritchard’s Creek (nv) If Dec 1968
Bonita Egg (nv) F&SF Sep 1969
Formula for a Special Baby (nv) F&SF Dec 1969

Phyllis Eisenstein's "In the Western Tradition". Wonderful story. (A time viewer story, one of my pet categories.) F&SF, March 1981

William F. Wu's story and novel of a robot in the west: "Hong's Bluff" and HONG ON THE RANGE.

I dug out Eric Frank Russell's "The Illusionaries" (PLANET STORIES 1951, reprinted in Andre Norton's anthology SPACE PIONEERS), and that's the category it falls into also. Aliens land on
earth, are accustomed to enslaving lesser species by controlling their perceptions, try it on humans and it works fine, but decide that they can't make it work, get in their spaceship, and check out.
The end of the story suggests that the humans have been creating an illusion for the aliens and invokes Wyatt Earp and Jesse James.

All of Quinn Yarbro's vampire novels are historicals as well, and "In the Face of Death" is set muchly in the West of American Indians and San Francisco pre-Civil War ... and in the South during the war.

Howard Waldrop, with "Night of the Cooters" (Omni, April '87; also in the Waldrop collection NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, and in Kevin J. Anderson's GLOBAL DISPATCHES anthology) which has Texas Rangers battling H.G. Wells' Martian invaders -- of WAR OF THE WORLDS fame -- at the same time they are landing elsewhere on Earth (1898?). A gem.

SF/Westerns:
Anybody yet mention Jonathan Lethem, _Girl in Landscape_ (1998), which makes complicated (but perfectly recognizeable) play with _The Searchers_ .

WiIliam Tenn's story "Eastward Ho!" which, I think, was about the Indians crowding the white man out of America.

Bibliographical problem: Hugh B. Cave in Finnish

I just posted a short bibliography of the short stories by Hugh B. Cave that were translated and published in Finnish in my bibliographical sidekick blog here. None of the stories show up in any reliable Cave bibliography and he himself didn't remember them, when I had the opportunity to interview him just a month before he died. So, if anyone here can identify these stories, I'd be most grateful.

Stack of Robert E. Howards

I bought these nice items couple weeks ago. You can easily guess we don't usually have this stuff here in Finland. And what's nice is that I got them cheap.

Charles Beckman (1920-2015)

I just heard from James Reasoner that Charles Beckman died two weeks ago. He was probably the last real pulp magazine writer alive - I can't think of anyone else, after Hugh B. Cave, Jack Williamson, Frank Kelly, Ray Bradbury, and Elmore Leonard have all passed away.

Beckman's career wasn't straight-forward. He wrote for the crime and western pulps, he wrote for the sleaze houses in the mid-to-late sixties, he wrote for the men's magazines, he wrote for the romance publishers with his wife, he also wrote some non-fiction on jazz - he was a jazz drummer first. Beckman's first published short story was "Strictly Poison" in Detective Tales, October 1945.

Beckman got active just before the end, compiling two collections of his old pulp tales: Suspense, Suspicion & Shockers, and Saddles, Sixguns & Shootouts. I have the first one, but haven't had time to check into it. Note also the new biography Pulp Jazz available from CreateSpace. The book also seems to have a bibliography of Beckman's writing, but I thought I'd also include one myself, here at my bibliographic sidekick blog.

I also published Beckman myself. I put out a small booklet (see above) containing two of his stories, a noirish hardboiled pulp story "Die Dancing, Kid!" (Detective Tales, January 1947) and a more thoughtful "Class Reunion" (AHMM, June 1973). The first one was published originally in Finnish in a magazine called Seikkailujen Maailma (The World of Adventures) and the translator remains unknown. The latter one was translated by my friend Tapani Bagge and published in a short-lived crime fiction mag RikosPalat (CrimeBits) in the late eighties. Both were republished by permission from Mr. Beckman himself, with thanks to James Reasoner and Walker Martin!

Interview on Women Crime Writers

Here's Cullen Callagher's nice interview with Sarah Weinman on her 2-volume anthology Women Crime Writers. Check it out, it's a very good interview with interesting points.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Jack MacLane: Goodnight, Moom

I was lucky to find this almost ancient paperback from a junkyard sale at a comics book store here in Turku. Goodnight, Moom, published originally in 1989, is a cult item, cherished by few aficionados. And it deserves to be.

It's a sort of Frankenstein tale, set amongst the white trash of Texas. Victor Frankenstein of the book is Ed Leach, a car mechanic who abuses his wife and does nothing else but work at his garage and drink beer with his loser buddies. The monster of the book is his son, Harry, whom Ed throws against the wall when the kid is very small. Something happens to the baby and he grows up weird, not saying anything to anyone. He goes to school, but learns nothing. At one point, Harry tortures a kitten. Then he kills another child, a girl who's taken to liking him, since he's so quiet all the time. Ed decides to lock Harry up in the cellar. His mother, Harriette, takes care of the boy, but is afraid of him. And she should be... Harry breaks free and goes on a killing spree, repeating "moom" everytime full moon is up. Ed goes
after him, just like Victor Frankenstein does in Shelley's novel. It develops into a nasty mess, with Ed wanting to keep his son's misdeeds hidden.

Goodnight, Moom is a well-paced horror novel with a ghastly plot and ghastly details, but what's more important is that Jack MacLane can make Harry an interesting character, even though Harry can't speak and doesn't know any words for his strange emotions. You care for the sick, silent bastard. And you care for Harriette, his mother, and you even might care for Ed - you almost surely care for his loser buddies whom he takes with him to catch Harry.

Jack MacLane is really Bill Crider, the Texan writer, paperback collector and blogger. He used the pseudonym Jack MacLane in a string of horror books written for the now-defunct Zebra. The Texas landscape comes alive with many telling details about the wasted life of the small-town Texans. At times Crider goes into a tall-tale territory, like his friend Joe Lansdale also often does.

Goodnight, Moom is available as an e-book alongside the other Jack MacLanes Crider wrote.

One of the Jack MacLanes, Keepers of the Beast, was translated in Finnish in 1989 as Paholaisen opetuslapset in the short-lived horror series by the Viihdeviikarit publishers. There's a sheriff called Jay Reasoner in the book, but that's about all I remember from the book. Might be the time to reread it.

More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog here or at Todd Mason's blog here.

Jason Starr: Savage Lane

As I've said a hundred times before, Jason Starr is one of my all-time favourite writers: nasty, twisted, funny, fluent. He's very readable and catchy, yet there's nothing amiable about his book. At the same time you really care for his characters, they are not mere pawns in the game.

Starr's newest book Savage Lane marks his return to noir thriller and does it with a wicked punch. Starr treads the same ground as Gillian Flynn, but there's nothing to suggest he's just going after a trend. This is his territory, pure and simple. 

There's something different this time, however. Savage Lane is set in the healthy suburbs, not the seedy downtown and the facile city of his earlier novels. Savage Lane is about the not-so-healthy relationships born out of the shallowness of suburban life and the self-treachery of the people inhabiting the nice homes. Starr's stablemate, sociopathic liars, figure greatly in the novel, and Starr's use the unreliable narrator is matchless. The shifts in the narration and what they reveal about the characters is laugh-out-funny. The timing is perfect. Yet there's no crime almost halfway in. When it comes, it's almost a shock - and after we've gotten over it, we start to laugh. 

Savage Lane is actually a pretty savage book. It's Desperate Housewives meets Psycho. Megan Abbott is right saying: "Who but Jason Starr could render suburban vice pitch black, sneakily endearing and wickedly funny all at once? Like James M. Cain meets Tom Perrotta, Savage Lane shows, in grand style, how twisted the hearts of All-American families can be, and how those picket white fences can be dangerously sharp."

Read more about the book at the Polis Books site (they seem to be doing good work bringing out new noir and hardboiled thrillers, alongside the more traditional ones) and at LitReactor where Keith Rawson has some nice things to say about the book.