Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Kronos

Here’s another entry in a sub-genre that could be called Movies That Scared the Crap Out of Me When I Was a Kid. Of course, it’s another Fifties alien invasion movie like last week’s INVADERS FROM MARS. In this one, an alien spaceship lands not in a sand pit but rather in the ocean, and instead of the evil aliens taking over humans, they have a big-ass robot that sets out to wreak havoc.


And here comes the part that makes the movie, well, somewhat less scary. The robot looks kind of like . . . a giant water tank.


That’s right, the elevated water tanks you can find on the edge of every small town in America. Doesn’t exactly strike fear in your heart, does it? In fact, I remember watching this for the umpteenth time one summer morning on the Dialing for Dollars Movie when a member of my family who shall remain nameless walked by, glanced at the screen, and said, “Is this that stupid giant water tank movie again?”


Some people just don’t get it. KRONOS was still pretty scary when I was eight or nine years old. I found it quite entertaining, too. It might not be now – I haven’t seen it in many years – but back then it was one of my favorites. Maybe yours, too. Or maybe not.

A Deal You Absolutely Cannot Beat

From Lee Goldberg:

It was two years ago today that, at Joe Konrath's urging, I began my "Kindle Experiment" by making my out-of-print book THE WALK available as an ebook. I've sold close to 20,000 copies of THE WALK since then...and to celebrate, and in a blatant to attempt to propel THE WALK into the top 100 on Amazon for the first time, I am selling the book for just 99 cents for the next week.

But to make the offer even sweeter, and to promote my original ebook series THE DEAD MAN, anyone who emails me proof of purchase (at lee@leegoldberg.com) will get a free copy of FACE OF EVIL. That's two books for just 99 cents.

And those are two mighty fine books, too.  THE WALK is my favorite novel of Lee's and one of the best books I've read in recent years, and of course I think FACE OF EVIL is a hugely entertaining yarn.  If you haven't started the Dead Man series yet, this is the perfect chance.  And if you haven't read THE WALK, don't wait.  Get these books now.

Dawn - C.R. Fausset

My friend C.R. Fausset has just has his first story published over on Pulp Metal Magazine.  "Dawn" is about a rookie police officer in Denton, Texas (a town near and dear to my own heart) and is the first in what I hope will be a long-running series.  Check it out.

Painted Post Gunplay Cover

This is the cover on the Sheriff Blue Steele novel Rich Prosch asks about in the comments on yesterday's Western pulps post.  It looks pretty good, but I haven't read it yet.  I will . . . eventually.

Nooked Again!

This week we've gotten three more of our books posted on Barnes & Noble for their Nook.  I meant to have more than that done but have been too busy with other stuff.  More books should go up next week, but right now those of you with Nooks can get COSSACK THREE PONIES, ALURA'S WISH, and YESTERDAY'S FLAME.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Popular Western, March 1937

This is a pretty typical Western pulp cover from the Thirties. Lots of poker tables were overturned on pulp covers in those days. I've read very little, if anything, by two of the featured authors, Eli Colter and Forbes Parkhill. Eli Colter was actually a woman, Elizabeth Colter, who began writing action-packed stories for the Western pulps in 1925, when she was still a teenager, and kept it up until the early Fifties. Forbes Parkhill had a similar career, writing for a variety of pulps from the early Twenties to the late Forties. Tom Gunn, also featured on the cover, may have been a house-name, but the long series of stories published under that name about Sheriff Blue Steele of the town of Painted Post are generally considered to be the work of Syl McDowell, another prolific pulpster with a career ranging from the Twenties to the Fifties. I have one of the Blue Steele novels reprinted in paperback by Pocket Books but haven't read it yet. McDowell, under his own name, contributed another long series of stories to THRILLING WESTERN about a pair of incompetent cowboys called Swap and Whopper. The Swap and Whopper stories are comedic yarns and always struck me as an attempt to transplant Abbott and Costello to the Old West. I'll be honest with you: I don't like Swap and Whopper and after failing to finish many of the stories featuring them, I finally just stopped trying to get through them whenever I was reading an issue of THRILLING WESTERN. I've read some of McDowell's other stories that I thought were pretty good, though, so I still have hope for Sheriff Blue Steele.

Juri Nummelin's Post About Diamondback

If you haven't read Juri Nummelin's post about his involvement with DIAMONDBACK, you should do so. Literally is an overused word, but this book literally would not exist today without Juri. And he's posted Duane Spurlock's excellent cover for the edition that never came about.  Check it out.

Forgotten Books: Negative of a Nude - Charles E. Fritch

(This post originally ran in slightly different form on July 2, 2005.)


Charles E. Fritch was my editor at MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE for several years and was the one who asked me to take over writing all the Mike Shayne novellas. This was the first regular writing job I ever had, and I've always been grateful to Chuck for the opportunity.


NEGATIVE OF A NUDE is half of an Ace Double (TILL DEATH DO US PART by Louis Trimble is on the other side) and as far as I know the only book Chuck did for Ace. It features private eye Mark Wonder, who is hired to recover some blackmail photos and along the way finds himself trying to solve the murder of an old enemy of his so that the killing won't be pinned on him.


At first the story is told in a light, breezy style reminiscent of Richard S. Prather, and Fritch does light and breezy just fine. But then he springs some surprises that put a much darker face on things and elevate this book from a romp to something richer and deeper. The plot also becomes surprisingly complex for a book that probably clocks in at 40,000 words or less. All in all, an excellent hardboiled private eye yarn.

The Dead Man #5: The Blood Mesa

Lee Goldberg just sent me the final version of the cover for my Dead Man story, THE BLOOD MESA, which will be out early in July.  I think this is a spectacular cover, and I couldn't be more pleased with it.  I hope the book lives up to it.

Every Shallow Cut - Tom Piccirilli

The plot of Tom Piccirilli’s short novel EVERY SHALLOW CUT is fairly simple: A failed writer, with his marriage broken up and his house lost to foreclosure, sets out to drive across country with his few possessions and his English bulldog Churchill to visit his brother, his agent, and an old friend.


Oh, and he has a gun, too, to go along with his despair.


If you’re a writer, this is one of the truest books you’ll ever read. I’ve been in many of the same places where Piccirilli’s unnamed narrator finds himself, and I’ve thought many of the same thoughts that go through his head. I’ve been luckier in many respects than this poor guy, but a lot of the feelings are the same and I suspect that’s true of most writers. EVERY SHALLOW CUT is one of those rare books that’s so good it hurts.


And that’s all I have to say about it except that you should read it, whether you’re a writer or not. But if you’re a writer, you really should.