Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Sleepers West

I've never understood why Hollywood bought the rights to the Mike Shayne novels by Davis Dresser, then, with the exception of the first film in the series, based all the Shayne movies on novels by other writers. SLEEPERS WEST, for example, is based on the novel SLEEPERS EAST by Frederick Nebel, with Shayne shoehorned into the plot in a role that could have been filled by any private eye or cop. Haven't read the book, so I don't know what other changes they might have made other than the direction in the title—something that's equally baffling.

At any rate, Shayne's job in this one is get a beautiful blond witness from Denver to San Francisco in time to testify in a high-profile murder case. Her testimony will blow the case sky-high. This assignment is complicated by the presence on the train of a beautiful brunette reporter who's an old flame of Shayne's; her stuffy fiancée; a railroad detective; a mysterious stranger with a briefcase full of cash; and another stranger who has a habit of going around and pointing a gun at people. Will Shayne sort it all out and get the witness to San Francisco in time? What do you think?

This is one of those movies where something is happening all the time, and you'd better pay attention to the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue because it's going to be important later on. It has that in common with the actual Shayne novels, at least.

Lloyd Nolan never played Mike Shayne like the one from the books. He's much more whimsical. I enjoy his performances anyway and don't expect them to be an accurate adaptation of the character. Even so, there are moments when he's suitably tough and gives the impression that he's two steps ahead of everybody else, like the book Shayne. The rest of the supporting cast is good, the production values are high for a B-movie, and watching this one made me want to go somewhere on a train, even though I realize that train travel today is nothing like it was back in the Forties. SLEEPERS WEST is a lot of fun, and I'm glad I watched it.

Joe Frankenstein - Graham Nolan and Chuck Dixon

Joe Pratt is a pretty hapless case: 17 years old, living in a foster home because his parents were killed in an airplane crash, delivering pizza at night and struggling through school in the day. That all changes one snowy night in Buffalo when he makes a delivery to a house full of beautiful women who turn out to be vampires wanting to feed on him. Before that can happen, a giant but somehow urbane monster crashes in, dispatches the vampires, and tells a stunned Joe that his real name is Joe Frankenstein. The monster, of course, is the legendary Frankenstein's monster, who has spend centuries protecting the descendants of Victor Frankenstein.

This all happens quickly in the beginning of a very fast-paced tale originally published as a four-part mini-series. This collection adds a new ten-page prologue that establishes the history behind the on-going conflict in which Joe finds himself. The back cover calls it "an action-horror-adventure tale", and it's all of that and more, as there's plenty of dark humor (including a Sesame Street joke that you'll miss if you blink) and a sort of globe-trotting, international intrigue vibe. The monster, you see, is a tycoon (easy to make money when you have all the time in the world, he explains) who has all sort of high-tech weaponry and gadgets. He needs that because he's engaged in a long, bitter war with his renegade "bride", who now commands a vast supernatural criminal empire.

JOE FRANKENSTEIN was created by Graham Nolan, who provides the art and co-wrote the script, and Chuck Dixon, the other scripter on the project. It's great, over-the-top fun from start to finish, never taking itself too seriously as it races along at a breakneck pace. It's clearly only the first chapter in a much bigger story, and I hope the sequel(s) come along soon. If you're a comics and/or horror fan, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, October 1, 1930

I didn't know you could still buy pith helmets, but I checked on Amazon and they have a bunch of 'em. I'll have to give that some thought. In the meantime, here's another great issue of ADVENTURE with stories by H. Bedford-Jones. Arthur O. Friel, Hugh Pendexter, L. Patrick Greene, and an article by W.C. Tuttle. No wonder ADVENTURE is regarded as one of the best pulp magazines ever published.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western Stories, December 1954

The Columbia Western pulps, including REAL WESTERN, are regarded as bottom-rung publications, but hey, this issue has a pretty nice cover and there's a Gordon D. Shirreffs novella in it, as well as a Lee Winters story by Lon Williams. Admittedly, I don't recognize the names of any of the other authors except Mat Rand, which was a house-name and could have been anybody. But this still looks like an issue worth reading.

Now Available: Six-Guns: Six Classic Western Novels

(This is a great deal, if I do say so myself.)

Six classic Western novels. The good old shoot-'em-up westerns are still around, and this collection has six by the masters of the genre. 

William M. "Bill" Tilghman had one of the most illustrious careers of any Old West lawman, but he faced perhaps his greatest and most dangerous challenge when he rode alone into the wild Oklahoma Territory settlement of Burnt Creek on the trail of a gang of rustlers and outlaws with some unexpected allies . . . THE LAWMAN, by New York Times bestselling author James Reasoner, is the first novel in the West of the Big River series. 

In Frank Roderus’ HOME TO TEXAS, Charlie McMurty brought a herd north, got a great price, and had enough left over once he repaid his neighbors to buy a ranch so he could ask for the hand of his sweetheart. Unfortunately, on the way back to Texas he was robbed and left for dead. To make matters worse one of his attackers was his friend he'd hired to help him with the herd. All he had left was a big debt back home and a big hole in his chest. His new quest became the need to be able to return his neighbor's money. First he had to heal and learn some fancy shooting. 

Violence stole young Ben Brand's family from him, but blessed with uncanny speed and skill with a gun and befriended by an old mountain man, Ben sets out on a bloody quest for vengeance. As he tracks his enemies over the years and the miles, Ben battles men and the elements—and risks his own soul—to become the avenging nemesis known as Iron Heart! Long out of print and originally published under the pseudonym Walt Denver, IRON HEART is a classic Western from Jory Sherman. 

Veteran author Clay More spins a fast-paced Western adventure in STAMPEDE AT RATTLESNAKE PASS. With her father murdered and her brother crippled by bushwhackers, half her herd stolen and her crew massacred by vicious rustlers, beautiful blond Elly Horrocks is going to have her hands full keeping the family ranch going. Luckily for Elly, drifting cowpoke Jake Scudder has a nose for trouble. It'll take all of Scudder's skill with guns and fists to save himself and keep Elly from being wiped out. Diamondbacks aren't the deadliest varmints in Rattlesnake Pass anymore! 

Some men deserved to die like rabid animals. In FAST HAND the Thornberrys and their worthless cousin counted among those the world would be better off without. Judge Sebastian Hand sentences the Thornberry gang to the gallows for rape and murder. But when they escape, the judge trades in his gavel for a gun, and suddenly he's judge, jury, and executioner all in one. Karl Lassiter is the pen name of a prolific author who also writes under the pen name Jackson Lowry. 

James J. Griffin's famous character Texas Ranger Jim Blawcyzk isn’t really working for the Rangers this time. In fact, he winds up on the wrong side of the law with the Rangers after him, because he takes off his badge and goes after the gang that attacked and possibly murdered his wife and son. As a result, RANGER’S REVENGE is a little grittier than Griffin’s earlier books, but it has the same fine action scenes, interesting settings, and welcome touches of humor.

Forgotten Books: Superman in the Seventies - Elliot S! Maggin, Cary Bates, et al.

When I was reading comics as a kid, Superman was never one of my favorite characters, although I have fond memories of watching the Superman TV show with George Reeves every day after school. But there were other DC characters, such as Batman and Green Lantern, I liked better. Oh, I saw Superman in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and occasionally picked up an issue of SUPERMAN or ACTION COMICS, but my history with the character is spotty at best.

So out of the 13 stories in the trade paperback collection SUPERMAN IN THE SEVENTIES (published back in 2000), I had read only one, a story from Jack Kirby's great run on SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN. The others were all new to me, and while they didn't quite make me feel like I had gone back to that era, I enjoyed them.

Many of the stories in this volume were written by Elliot S! Maggin (yes, that's the way he was credited), who was the most prominent Superman writer during the Seventies. Maggin's first script was for a Green Arrow back-up yarn in GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW that turned out to be a classic, and quite possibly the best thing he ever wrote. But his Superman stories were very good and added some depth to the character. At the time I thought the idea of making Clark Kent a TV reporter and adding "workplace humor" to the stories was a terrible idea, but looking back now I find the stuff somewhat charming, if a little clunky.

Other stories are by Cary Bates, also a very prolific scripter for DC during the Seventies, usually on Superman or The Flash, Len Wein, Paul Levitz, and Denny O'Neil, who contributed an important "turning point" story in which all the kryptonite on earth is destroyed, leaving Superman more invulnerable than ever...or is he? These are all good yarns, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, all in 17 to 22 pages, unlike today's endless story arcs and crossovers. Admittedly, sometimes the shorter lengths work against the stories, leading to deus ex machina endings or some that are just too rushed, but for the most part they're very enjoyable.

Not surprisingly, most of the art is by Curt Swan, who penciled hundreds of Superman stories during a career that lasted more than four decades, usually being inked by another legend, Murphy Anderson. Superman fan or not, I always liked Swan's art. The guys in those days were storytellers, something that's often lacking in today's comics.

Overall I found this to be a good, solid collection and really enjoyed reading it. There's a lot of DC stuff from the Sixties and Seventies I never got around to reading back then, since I was mostly a Marvel fan and had only so much money to spend on comics, so I'm trying to catch up on some of it now that I've given up reading most modern comics. For curmudgeons like me, collections like these are a nice trip into the past.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Chino

This is another Western movie I missed somehow when it was new, surprising because it stars one of my favorite actors, Charles Bronson. Although it's a Spaghetti Western of sorts, filmed in Spain with a largely Italian and Spanish cast and crew, in addition to Bronson the cast includes Jill Ireland and Vincent Van Patten, the screenplay is by Clair Huffaker (based on Lee Hoffman's Spur-winning novel THE VALDEZ HORSES), and the movie was directed, at least in part, by John Sturges.

Bronson, who is fine as usual, plays horse rancher and bronc buster Chino Valdez, who's content with his lonely life until a young drifter named Jamie (Van Patten) shows up looking for work and a place to stay. The two gradually develop a sort of father-son relationship. Complicating Chino's life even more is the beautiful half-sister (Ireland) of the local cattle baron who'd like to push Chino off his land. The romance that springs up between them seems to be doomed from the start.

With that set-up and the pedigree of the people involved, CHINO really should have been a better movie. It suffers from a very slow pace and a lack of action, although the few fights between Chino and the rancher's men are well done. The ending is unsatisfying, too. Throw in a musical score that doesn't seem to fit, and you've got an oddball film that's not very good.

But I'm glad I watched it anyway, even if it's just for Bronson's screen presence. He always dominates the screen, whether he's fighting for his life against four men or carrying around a newborn foal. His off-screen chemistry with Jill Ireland makes his scenes with her work pretty well, too. So if you haven't seen this one, it's worth watching if you're a Bronson fan, just don't expect too much.

The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes - Lawrence Block

You don't get much more noir than this set-up: a Florida private eye who's a retired New York cop is recruited by the local sheriff to pose as a hitman and gather evidence against a beautiful young woman who wants to have her older, very wealthy husband murdered. You've read these books. What do you think the guy's going to do?

You're right, of course. He's going to fall hard for the woman and start plotting with her to murder her husband for real, all the while scheming to cover up the crime with the authorities. You've read these books, and Lawrence Block has written them. Heck, he was writing them more than fifty years ago.

Not quite like THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES, however. It quickly becomes obvious that despite its Gold Medal-like plot, Block's not going to handle it like a Gold Medal. Those books had a lot of sexual tension in them, but the sex itself was mostly the fade-to-black kind. In this brand-new novel from Hard Case Crime (officially published and on-sale tomorrow), there's a lot of sex and nearly all of it is graphic. In the hands of a writer less skilled then Block, it would border on pornography. In this novel, though, it just seems realistic, a necessary updating of the classic material to go along with all the talk about computers and flash drives and burner cell phones.

In fact, it may be that's what Block is trying to point out, that our society, for all its technological advances, is a lot coarser today than it was fifty or sixty years ago. Sure, the lovers in those books from Gold Medal and Dell slept with each other and knocked off spouses and ran from the law, but there was still a certain innocence about it. (Well, maybe not in the books by Gil Brewer!) Or maybe Block's just trying to tell a good story, which he does. With his smooth, unobtrusive prose and his knack for creating interesting characters, he keeps the reader flipping the pages with an undeniable urge to find out what's going to happen.

Probably the last thing Lawrence Block wants to do at this stage of his career is create a new series, but I really liked the sheriff in this novel and wouldn't mind seeing him again. Got to be more crime in Florida, right? In the meantime, if you're a fan of Block's work, you probably have THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES on order already. If you don't...well, like I said, it'll be out tomorrow.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, August 1942

FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES may have abridged some of the stories it reprinted, but you can't beat those Virgil Finlay covers, like this one on the August 1942 issue. In addition to the A. Merritt novel, there's a short story by E.F. Benson in this issue. I need to get around to reading more by A. Merritt. I've enjoyed what little I've read.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, November 4, 1939

An unusual but striking cover by Wesley Neff on this issue of WESTERN STORY, illustrating Tom Roan's novella "Hangtown". Other authors in this issue include Norman A. Fox, Frank Richardson Pierce, and Glenn H. Wichman. I've read and enjoyed all those authors except Wichman, and I'm sure I'll get around to him, as often as he appeared in the Western pulps.