John Grant's massive encyclopedia of film noir

One of my Christmas presents was this huge film noir encyclopedia by film historian John Grant. I asked for it on purpose, because I had a hunch I'd enjoy the book.

And I most certainly did. Grant's book commands respect. He covers 3,500 films, both classic films noirs of the Golden Age of Hollywood and later neo-noirs of the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. He also includes lots of forgotten gems no one's ever heard of and has a feel for the Asian films as well. Grant knows his stuff and writes well. He has also nice things to say about some underrated films.

There are some problems with the book, though. The main thing for any reader is that it doesn't have a proper index. Some actors and directors are indexed, but it's a frustrating collection of only the most famous names. The point of this kind of book is the info on less-known films and directors, although Grant gives nice mini-essays also on well-known films, such as Citizen Kane. The info on the films is at times a bit thin, sometimes Grant provides only a short synopsis. And I happen to have a habit of skipping synopses and going straight to the review or the analysis part.

Grant also includes films I have a hard time to accept as noirs, mainly from the eighties and nineties, such as Ridley Scott's Black Rain, Gregory Hoblit's Primal Fear and Alan J. Pakula's Presumed Innocent. Are these noirs?

It's of course possible to say that it's better to give too much information than too little of it. Grant also includes films that are only fringe noirs, such as British suspense fillers from the fourties. It's unlikely they are full of sound and fury and despair that describes some of their Hollywood counterparts. But it seems Grant allows for many kind of definitions of film noir, even contradictory. He discusses these definitions in the foreword, giving out examples and thematic similarities, but still seems like his definition is too wide. I'm not really complaining, mind you, it's interesting to read also about those films.

I could find some films that Grant hasn't mentioned. What about Stark Fear from 1963? Radio On from 1979? I also checked - rather painstakingly because of the absent index - all the films based on the books and screenplays by Jean-Patrick Manchette. There's only one mentioned!

There are also some glaring omissions of foreign films noirs. It's understandable of course, when there's only scarce or no information on them easily available. Then again there are lots of non-Hollywood films Grant mentions I've never heard of (and likely will never see) from, say, Spain or Greece. Grant mentions some Finnish films as well, but he has only some three films by Aki Kaurismäki and one (half-Estonian) by Ilkka Järvi-Laturi. All of them are neonoirs from the eighties and nineties, while there were lots of studio-era films noirs made in Finland. Here are some of the classic Finnish films noirs for you:

Teuvo Tulio: Rikollinen nainen (The Criminal Woman); Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit (The Way You Wanted Me); Rakkauden risti (The Cross of Love) (all sleazy melodramas)
T. J. Särkkä: Kuu on vaarallinen (The Moon is Dangerous,  pure James M. Cainish stuff about a wild woman charming an older guy)
Roland af Hällström: Pohjoisen pikajuna (The Express Train to North, suspense in a train)
Edvin Laine: Musta rakkaus (Black Love - hey, even the title is purest noir!)
Matti Kassila: Varsovan laulu (The Warszaw Song; about smuggling); Tulipunainen kyyhkynen (The Crimson Dove, psychological suspense)
Veikko Itkonen: Silmät hämärässä (The Eyes in the Mist, one of the purest films noirs in Finnish cinema)
Aarne Tarkas: Olemme kaikki syyllisiä (We're All Guilty, what could be more noir than that?); Hän varasti elämän (He Stole a Life, marvelous Psycho pastiche, made already in the early sixties, absurd and darkly funny)

There are lots of others, but these came off top of my head. There are also many humorous crime films that because of the time they were done and the black-and-white photography are mentioned as films noirs, but I'm not sure whether they qualify. Some of the films mentioned above will be screened at the Festival of Finnish Cinema later in the coming spring, I'll write more about them then (as I did last year about Finnish westerns, see here and here).

As Grant also has lots of neonoirs in the book, here's also a list of Finnish neonoirs:

Pauli Pentti: Pimeys odottaa (The Darkness Waits); Macbeth (b&w rendering of the Shakespeare play)
Pekka Hyytiäinen: MP - minä pelkään (IA – I'm Afraid, uneasy but very hypnotic mixture of experimental dystopian film and some very personal horror; Hyytiäinen's other indie-produced films might also qualify, but they are very hard to come by)
Veikko Aaltonen: Tuhlaajapoika (A Prodigal Son, sleazy scumbag noir with S&M undertones); Rakkaudella, Maire (With Love, Maire, very stylish piece of Hitchcockian noir)
Petri Kotwica: Musta jää (Black Ice, family noir)
Ville Mäkelä: Lain ulkopuolella (Outside the Law, a vigilante film)
Taavi Kassila: Petos (Betrayal, a nice piece of epoque noir)
Mika Kaurismäki: Condition Red (Aki's brother's film filmed somewhere in Texas)
Visa Mäkinen: Yön saalistajat (The Predators of the Night,
sleazy hardboiled crime film from the only proper exploitation director-producer of the Finnish film history)

(Too many links to provide here, sorry - Google them or check them at IMDb!)

All in all, John Grant's book comes highly, highly recommended by me.

What did I say about noir in Hollywood in the 2010s?

Remember what I said about new noir films in Hollywood? See my post on Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners here.

I stumbled on a post at Hardboiled Wonderland listing the best crime films of the last year. Seems there are more noir or at least noirish crime films out there than I first realized. I hated The Counselor, but Jedidiah Ayres writes interestingly on other films he mentions. (Of course not all the films are Hollywood, but nevertheless.)

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Heathers (1988)

I finally saw this cult classic from the late eighties. Watched it from an old VHS, and over at Facebook a friend said that it's a film that just has to be watched from VHS.

There is indeed certain charm that only low-budget 80's flicks have. But that aside, this is a neat quirky little film that has lots going for it: young Winona Ryder and Christian Slater with their snarling accents, taut script by Daniel Waters (I believe he won the Edgar for the script) and funny late eighties' costumes. The story about two high school lovers who start killing their school mates is twisted and funny. Slater's behaviour is never really explained, which is a good thing, since it might've been awkward. There are also some implausibilities as comes to the behaviour of Winona Ryder's character and her behaviour. The ending with Ryder starting to befriend the high school fatso didn't feel right, even though I can see why they did it that way.

Nevertheless, this is a fun film that hasn't dated badly. (More Overlooked Films here.)

Denis Villeneuve: Prisoners

I just saw this in a movie theater (a press screening) and I was totally overwhelmed! What a movie!

The story about two missing kids and their families going through a heart-breaking and violent tragedy might play out sentimental and simplistic, but Denis Villeneuve, in his first Hollywood outing, keeps things both fragile and rough at the same time. You can feel the tension in the pictures, in the actors' movements, in the saddening Pennsylvania milieu the film takes place in... Although there are some things that were done less or more slackly, I'll give this five stars out of five.

It must've started out with Winter's Bone. There have been lots of recent interesting and touching films that have crimes in them, but are not crime films per se: Place Beyond the Pines, Paperboy, Mud, Take Shelter, End of Watch... There are also Andrew Dominik's admirable Killing Them Softly and William Friedkin's sick but funny Killer Joe, not to mention Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and Only God Forgives and Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

Noir thrives in Hollywood.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Year of the Dragon

I watched Michael Cimino's 1985 film from an old VHS cassette, afterwards I threw the cassette away. Why? Because I want to get rid of my old cassettes - of course only those that can be replaced. But seems like everything is replaceable nowadays. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not.

I'd seen Cimino's film earlier - some 20 years ago, or even longer ago - and it hadn't made much of an impact on me. The same thing happened also at this time. One might blame the fact that I watched the movie from a worn cassette with possibly a wrong picture ratio. But still I find I wasn't very intrigued with Cimino's script and his characters. I'm not sure if I ever want to try to see this on big screen.

Even though there might be much to like in the film for someone who likes his crime fiction heroes despicable. Mickey Rourke is not bad in Year of the Dragon, but he's overdone with his fedora and long overcoat. His motivations are not very satisfactorily explained and he almost comes off as the hero, even though he's shown to be a bully and racist. This is a very contradictory film at its heart.

There are many great scenes in the film (such as Chinese drug lord John Lone's visit to Thailand, also the shootout near the end is expertly done), but there's also the stacked-on ending, which is really unfitting. And then there's the scene in which Rourke almost attacks a woman after which the said woman starts kissing Rourke... You'd think they wouldn't have done these things in this way in 1985, but hey, what do you know?

More Overlooked Films here. (Seems like only later on.)

Unused Finnish cover for Jason Starr's Fake ID

Can't believe I haven't posted this earlier.

Remember when I used to edit the noir paperback series for a Finnish publisher, with books by Duane Swierczynski, Christa Faust, Scott Phillips and others? Well, the story didn't end well, since the line was canceled after six books. The format was changed into hardcover, but that didn't help.

I'd already translated Jason Starr's excellent Fake ID over years ago and it was scheduled to come up next in the series, in hardcover. Ossi Hiekkala made this very nice cover illustration to go with it, but the book never came out, due to many reasons. I can't really tell you how sorry I'm for this.

Joe Gores: Interface

After reading for years praises for Joe Gores' 1974 novel Interface I decided finally to read it during the holidays. The book is a private eye classic, but not anything Chandler or Macdonald might've written. It's a tense novel in which the private eye is no hero. He works with the crooks, for the crooks, against the crooks. He's no tarnished knight.

The "he" of the novel is Neil Fargo, but he's not the main protagonist of the book. There's also one Docker, half-crazy and violent Vietnam veteran, who in the beginning kills two guys and steals an attache case full of drug money. This takes place already in the midst of events, as Gores doesn't give anything away for the reader. He also writes in a terse, behaviorist style that stays away from depicting what the characters are thinking at any given moment or what they are driving at with their actions. This made - at least for me - pretty difficult to get into the book. The rhythm started to feel easier in the middle of the book. There's a mesmerizing twist in the end, but even that's not very easily narrated.

I'd really like to read this in a good translation - it's never been translated in Finnish, I don't know why (some other books by Gores have been) -, but somehow I don't think that's gonna happen. Still, a very good book that comes highly recommended.

Friday's (or actually Saturday's) Forgotten Book: Victor Gischler: Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

Back in the days when I was planning and editing the short-lived paperback series of the Arktinen Banaani publishers one of the manuscripts I was sent was Victor Gischler's Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse. I didn't read it at the time, because it seemed obvious from the start that the series wouldn't continue for long. I'd read Gischler's Vampire A-Go-Go and enjoyed it, but thought it wouldn't fit the paperback line easily; here's my blog post on the book. The manuscript of Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse I'd printed out came up when I was cleaning my desk before the holidays and I decided I'd finally read it, but instead of reading the book from the printed sheets, I ordered a copy from a web store.

I'm glad to tell you that Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse (GGGOTA) is a very good book. It's funny, exciting and violent, but there's also some warm humanity in the depiction of the protagonists. The set-up is good: one man has lived in a cage for nine years after the apocalypse (which is explained away in a short sentence, which is a good thing) kills three mysterious men he encounters in the woods and starts to think he should try to find out what's happened to the mankind. He also misses his wife he hasn't seen in nine years. Not all about their marriage is explained in the beginning and Gischler keeps important things away from sight till the second half of the book. The collapsed society of the near future is plausibly done, even though it's a mix-up of westerns and Mad Max. Gischler takes things over the top, but does that very well. GGGOTA is a grand adventure in the style of Huckleberry Finn. I would've gladly taken the book in with the Finnish paperback series, but alas the series didn't see the light of day after five books (and four that came out in hardcover - the format change didn't change a thing, even though we added two Finnish books in the bunch).


GGGOTA may not be to everyone's taste, but I liked the heck out of it. One point, though: I didn't like the scene with the crazy man-hating transsexual.

It seems Gischler managed to fund writing the sequel, but the book doesn't seem to be out as yet.

Didn't mean to do this as a part of the Forgotten Books meme, but here's a link to Todd's blog with the other links.

Merry XXXmas!

Happy Yuletide with a Vargas girl! 

Christa Faust: Choke Hold

Some of you may remember that I had a hand in getting Christa Faust's admirable paperback original Money Shot in Finnish in the all-too-short-lived paperback series of the Arktinen Banaani publishers. The book is very good and got some good reviews (some bad as well), but it sold zilch. So the sequel, called Choke Hold, never came out in Finnish.

Which is a pity, since Choke Hold is a very good book as well. Truth be told, I didn't read it until now. I can't explain how this came to be, but now it's finally read - and as I said, it's a great book. It has the same virtues as Money Shot: non-stop action, solid characterizations of fallible human beings, no-nonsense narration and witty banter both in dialogue and the voice of the protagonist, ex-porn actress Angel Dare. She's in witness protection program, but her past - told in Money Shot - gets back to her and she has to flee.

Choke Hold is a short novel, read almost in a jiffy, but in this kind of book that's a virtue of its own. Faust shows respectable professionalism in that she creates memorable characters in just a few lines and scenes of action. You'll remember some of her characters for a long time. The ending tells that Angel Dare's story is not over, which is a good thing, even though I'm not sure if I like the idea of series characters. There's enough grimness in Faust's climax that the next book is bound to start from scratch.

Friday's Forgotten Book: H. L. Lawrence: The Sparta Medallion

H. L. Lawrence wrote only two books. The other one, called both The Children of Light (1960), is the better-known of the two, since Joseph Losey based his Hammer-thriller The Damned on it - and it's a pretty good film, too, almost completely without the usual clumsiness of many Hammer thrillers. Lawrence's other book is called The Sparta Medallion and it was published one year after The Children of Light.

It's a pretty solid thriller, with a decidedly British bent on it. It stars a British geologist on his way to South America. He meets a strange German in the plane. The plane crashes however and only three people are left to survive: the geologist, the German and an air hostess. The German is killed in the jungle in mysterious circumstances, the air hostess is captured by the Indians and the geologist is left to survive in the jungle with the German's stuff, so when he's found he's thought to be the German. The man finds out soon there was something mysterious about the German and his belongings, and as he reaches Lima, several people are trying to kill him and take the suitcase that belonged to the German. The geologist however makes nothing out of the stuff therein.

It all comes down to a large, world-wide conspiracy that harks back to the Nazis, but Lawrence deals with it nicely in just 160 pages (I checked: the British first hardcover edition has 160 pages, the Finnish paperback has 139 pages). Nothing larger than life, just a nice solid thriller. It's a wonder Lawrence wrote nothing more. If someone has an explanation, I'd like to hear. Seems like he worked in advertising, maybe he ran out of time to do extra work.

More Forgotten Books here.

Charlie Williams: Graven Image

Wanted to read something short and catchy and reverted to my Kindle that I've used all too rarely for these past months. Charlie Williams's novella Graven Image had landed free on my Kindle just some time ago and I decided to read it.

And it's very good stuff, smooth but edgy, funny but smart, violent, brutish and noirish. It's the story of a fallen man who tries to make it good, but never succeeds. You want him to, even though he's not a good man, but you know from the start it doesn't end well for him.

I just kind of lost in the end. I really have no idea what went down. Maybe someone could explain it to me? I'm sure the fault is all mine, not Charlie Williams's.

Paul Denver: The Deadly Chance (1973)

Okay, I'm cheating here a bit. This is one of the books I'm including in my forth-coming book on British paperback crime fiction. I only browsed through the book while cycling at the gym. I think that's enough for this book, which isn't exactly quality stuff.

Paul Denver was one of the pseudonyms used by the British writer Douglas Enefer. He has no Wikipedia entry, but there's always Goodreads. I've read some of his books starring private eye Michael Power, they are mildly ok, mediocre but still entertaining enough. (Actually I first thought, over ten years ago when I was writing my first book, Pulpografia, that Denver was American.) Enefer also wrote some Cannon novelizations as by Paul Denver, and the titular The Deadly Chance is one of them. I believe the story went like this: when the bona fide American Cannon novelizations (written by Richard Gallagher) ran out, the British publisher World Distributors asked Denver to write more of them. And that's just what he did. I don't know whether Denver wrote on an outline or a screenplay of an episode or whether he just made it all up. I'll have to check that out.

The first problem is that Denver/Enefer can't write like an American. There's always a feeling someone's cheating. Denver/Enefer is clever enough though to keep descriptions at minimum. The dialogue also gives the Britishness of the author away, but that doesn't happen all that often in the Finnish translation (though it at times adds layers of its own). The story is a bit silly with its depiction of a small town drug scene, but there's a twist that might keep the reader interested. I say "might", because I skipped lots that went on interim. There's something tired about the book.

There are good British paperback crime novels out there, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. Included is the Finnish edition from 1976, published in a series that consisted only of TV novelizations.

Edit: I changed the publisher from Consul to World Distributors. They put out the Cannon novelizations written by Paul Denver. Consul published earlier paperbacks by Denver.

David/Day Keene: The Queens of Death?

I bought this old Finnish paperback (published in 1947) with three short stories in it several months ago, mainly because it has a Zorro story in it. If I'm right, this is the only real Zorro story by Johnston McCulley published in Finnish. It's probably one of the later Zorro stories that were published in pulp magazines, such as West. I believe these stories have never been reprinted.

I didn't read the Zorro story in the book, but I read the two preceding stories. The first one that also gives the book its title is written by "David Keene". The title reads as "The Queens of Death". Now, there's no David Keene who has written any kind of crime novels or stories that I can find. I can't find any trace of a story called "The Queens of Death". Of course it's possible that this story was published in a pulp magazine no one has ever indexed, but somehow I don't think that's right. I got to thinking it might be possible this is really by Day Keene. The Finnish publisher may have thought that "Day" is not a right name for an author and changed him to "David". These things happen. And Day Keene happens to have a pulp story called "Three Queens of the Mayhem", published in Detective Tales in February 1946, so it's entirely possible that this story found its way to Finland and got published as part of a three-story anthology.

There are three old women in David Keene's story. They are old ladies living together. They were once famous singers called The Beverly Sisters, but getting caught in a murder case ruined their career. Now one of the sisters asks private eye called Tom Doyle to try to find a girl one of the sisters was forced to give away to an orphanage. The story is fun, mildly parodist in tone and plot. It's written strictly in the zany school of hardboiled writing, reminiscent of Robert Bellem, Richard S. Prather and others. So, is it "Three Queens of Mayhem"? Anyone? Or is it some other story by Day Keene? Or is there a David Keene?

There's also another short story to stir up interest. It's called "Kadonnut sävel", which means "The Lost Tune" or some such. The hero of the story is troubleshooter of some sort called Hannibal Smith. He's a former sports coach, but now makes his living selling used stuff, giving loans and doing services to people. Hannibal Smith is a fat man, but he's also resourceful and intelligent and quick with his mouth. Now, there's a Hannibal Smith story called "Down Among the Dead Men" published in Dime Detective in 1945, written by C. William Harrison, who's best known for his paperback westerns. (I've read one, it was pretty good.) I'm pretty sure this story is by the same C. William Harrison. Can anyone confirm? The story is funny as Hannibal Smith is asked to take a photo of a cow somewhere in the fields. He does exactly that, but fast he realizes he maybe shouldn't have, since he's being suspected of a murder...

The great Finnish cover is by Poika Vesanto. Probably - I can't find his signature in the cover.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Moscow – Cassiopea (1974)

This is a Soviet science fiction film in which six teenagers - three boys, three girls - are sent in a spaceship to Cassiopea to investigate who's sending out radio code. The film is a first of the two, the sequel is called Teens in the Universe! In Finland, the sequel's been called "The Robots of Cassiopea".

This is a fun movie. It's goofy for sure, but it's also very sincere and not badly made at all. There are actually some very nice scenes in space, and the futuristic design of the spaceship itself is pretty good. There are also some surrealistic or hallucinogenic scenes in which the teens use the virtual reality provided by the spaceship to entertain themselves during the long trip. The film is also played as a comedy and a love movie between some of the kids.

I'm not sure if this is available in the English-speaking countries, but you can watch it in YouTube with Russian titles:


There's also this, using footage from the sequel (which I have yet to see):


More Overlooked Films here. At least pretty soon, I hope.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Frank Struan: Murder's So Unpleasant (1954)

In my on-going, but sporadic study of British paperback crime fiction, I read, almost in a jiffy, a short booklet by Frank Struan, called Murder's So Unpleasant. The Finnish title translates literally as Murhat ovat epämiellyttäviä. It was published here in a cheapo paperback series called Max Strong.

Frank Struan's real name was Graham Fisher, and all I know about him is that he was born in 1920. I don't know if he's still alive; probably not. He used the Frank Struan pseudonym in a series of stories that were published in the legendary British magazine called Tid-Bits in the early fifties. I've never seen these, but I believe one story filled out an entire magazine. If I'm mistaken, do correct me. Fisher wrote some thrillers still in the seventies, but that's all on him.

Murder's So Unpleasant is a mock-American hardboiled crime novel with a private eye hero called Johnny July. If he's a series character, he should be included in the Thrilling Detective listing. I don't know that yet, but I'll check it out. In this outing, Johnny July is hired to guard a wealthy business man, but he dies - in a closed room! - before July gets a chance to make out just from whom the man's supposed to be guarded from. There are two beautiful women involved in the case, the young bride of the deceased and her sister who seems to be after the man's inheritance. Or some such. I wasn't actually paying much attention and it's been already days since I read the booklet.

And this is what this book was really about. It's an one-hour entertainment, nothing more. There are notable gaps in the plot and Johnny July isn't a very interesting character, but I didn't really mind as the stuff went on with some speed. There are many references to Chandler. The city of the story is Bay City, Chandler's fictional city, and Johnny July is mugged and taken to a mental institute to be held there just like Marlowe in Farewell My Lovely.

I'm not sure how easily one could obtain stuff like this. The Finnish translation is easily found and cheap, though. The Finnish edition's cover art is by Spanish Portada Noiquet.

More Forgotten Books here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962)

I saw earlier today a 35 mm print of Czech animation wizard Karel Zeman's Baron Prásil, also known with the title of the subject line. In Finnish, it's been called Parooni Münchhausenin uskomattomat seikkailut. I don't know what's with the Baron Prásil thing, but that's not very important here.

I wrote earlier (three years ago!) about Zeman's other film (see here) and said that his films resemble the silent cinema. It's like we're seeing everything for the first time. It's a cinema of marvels and rare beauty. It's also the cinema of laughter and joy. And it fits Zeman made his film about Münchhausen whose adventures have brought us laughter and joy for many decades.

Zeman's technique - the mixing of live actors with animated backgrounds - works very well here. Everything is very exotic and strange and beautiful. This is also cinema of optimism, even though there's a healthy strand of satire as well.

Zeman's film is also an important precursor to steampunk, mixing modern heroes and inventions with steamboats, air balloons, flying horses and such. It's no wonder Terry Gilliam was impressed by the film.

This is a trailer someone made to commemmorate Zeman's film. More Overlooked Films here.

Ridley Scott & Cormac McCarthy: The Counselor

Damn, I wanted to like this film so much! I'm not a fan of Ridley Scott's work, but I know he can do some good stuff, but given that this was scripted by Cormac McCarthy and the genre is trashy hardboiled crime I was more than thrilled when I walked in the movie theater.

Damn, it sucked.

The Counselor has lots of good moments and some nice action scenes, but there are also lots of problems. First, the plot. Mind you, I'm a fan of ellipsis. I can love the way how not everything is explained or is explained a lot later after the incident has already taken place. McCarthy as the sole writer of the film - what, no script doctors here? should've been! - uses the ellipsis clumsily and makes the film seem more awkward than it really is.

Second, the dialogue. McCarthy's dialogue works very well on paper. It works well on big screen, if it's been rewritten by real screenwriters. Take a look at No Country for Old Men or The Road. The Counselor tries to tread the same ground, but gets stuck in long monologues that have no meaning plot-wise or stupid repeating of small phrases like "What?" or "Huh?" Some of the scenes are better in this sense, however, for example the first meeting of Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender.

Third, McCarthy writes women like shit. The character of Penélope Cruz is totally meaningless. She's an empty pawn with nothing to do. Cameron Diaz is somewhat better, but she's also over-written to the extent she becomes, like Cruz, a pawn. She has no life of her own, even though that purports to be the film's focus. The men of the film are more convincing.

Fourth, how can someone like McCarthy be so demure? He writes convincingly about killing, slaying, maiming, torturing and exploiting other people, but talking about sex and giving us good sex scenes between two people - or even people talking about sex - seems to be overwhelming for him. Probably he shouldn't try it anymore and stick with killing.

If you want to have some crime fiction about Mexican drug trafficking, try Don Winslow's Savages and The Power of the Dog. Or Sam Hawken's quiet and hypnotic Juaréz Dance.

Don Winslow: The Power of the Dog

I just finished this huge novel by Don Winslow, who's one of the foremost new hardboiled crime writers in the USA. I've liked what he's done, especially Savages (and I even liked the film, which most people seemed to hate), but there's something about him I can't quite grasp. He leaves me a bit cold. 

Winslow belongs firmly to the James Ellroy school of crime writing - at least when it comes to The Power of the Dog -, but he's different from Ellroy in two aspects: first, he writes about true stuff, things that have happened and are happening; second, he's not maniacal about his writing. His characters are not wacky psychos, like with Ellroy, and his language and narration are not clipped nightmares of White Jazz or The Cold Six Thousand. Winslow writes very curtly, with very short sentences, but his sentences are not feverish. They seem more like he's writing a story treatment for a film or a TV series. The same immediacy - we see only action, not the motives behind them, we are never offered glimpses of inside people's minds - is prevalent also in Winslow's other books, especially Savages, in which the narration at times transforms into fragments of a screenplay. 

So, when Winslow writes about the tragedy of war against drugs and the drug cartels of Mexico and Columbia that are in control in those countries, mostly with back-up from CIA and DEA, we know it's real stuff. He's that convincing. He shows in The Power of the Dog that the war against drugs should be stopped immediately, but he doesn't say that out loud. It's up to us to realize that ourselves. It helps Winslow's characters are not loonies. 

But maybe it's the reason the book left me colder than I really expected. Still, it's a great read, with many explosive action scenes and some very suspenseful chase scenes. It would work great as a TV series by HBO. 

The book came just out in Finnish from Like under the title Kuolleiden päivät/The Day of the Dead. 

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Attack of the Robots (1966)

Jess Franco was a Spanish director who has probably made more feature-length films than any other director. His filmography has about 200 films. Many of them are erotic horror, some of them are more mundane action and sex flicks. His reputation has never been too high and I've gathered many of his films indeed are of poor quality, but some of them have redeeming qualities about them, such as hallucinatory sequences and imaginative camera work.

I just managed to see two of his films, which I believe were the first for me. I saw both on 35 mm on big screen. The first one of the two was much better than the latter one, and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the screenwriter. Cartes sur table AKA Attack of the Robots (1966) was written by Jean-Claude Carrière, one of the best-known and most revered French screenwriters of the last 40 years. He's written lots of stuff for directors like Buñuel, Godard, Peter Brook, Philip Kaufman... and Jess Franco.

Cartes sur table is an enjoyable spy romp with many parodical touches. The film is full of silliness and it's almost always in the right tone, so it's not overdone or unintentional. There are some light touches of sadomasochism and fetishism, which both show in Carrière's and Franco's later films. Cartes sur table is also a reminiscent of Godard's Alphaville which was done a year earlier, so it's possible Carrière and Franco wanted to parody the better-known film. Both star Eddie Constantine as a hardboiled hero (though he seems silly and clumsy in Franco's film), both have Paul Misraki's music, and both have a huge central computer that speaks incoherently in the end.

Cartes sur table is one of those cheap spy flicks the French made in abundance in the sixties (remember the Lemmy Cautions and Nick Carters Constantine starred in?), but it's also a lightweight New Wave film in its self-reflectiveness which is never too loud. Comes recommended by me - if you can catch it, as it seems like there's no decent DVD publication.

And then I saw Franco's later Count Dracula with a stellar cast of Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom and Klaus Kinski, but this was only boring. Nothing else. Sorry. Nothing to see here.

Franco died earlier this year, having directed his last film in 2012. Its main character is called Al Pereira, just like Constantine in Cartes sur table.

More Overlooked Films here at Todd Mason's blog (after a hiatus).