PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Umbrella Man by DOK (J C Hager) 1911

The book was published in 1911. I bought the book in 1993 from a shop in St Paul that isn't there anymore. I forgot the name, it was on 7th Street. The book was pretty much as you see it. The paper isn't yellowed, it's actually brown Kraft paper, kind of thick, say a 60# text maybe, and the cover is similar but much heavier.

    

You can see it's been well handled. I'm proud to say none of those stains on the cover are mine. The binding has been failing so I cut the pages out and scanned them.

I thought the cartoons were fun, there's that goofy head umbrella, and the duck is entertaining. I liked Hager's style and his work is nicely reproduced in black and orange.

You can read more about J C Hager on the Wikipedia.  You can see the whole book in my Flickr album.

Black Angel 1946

Black Angel is a 1946 film noir which is based on the Cornell Woolrich novel The Black Angel. The Wikipedia says that Woolrich didn't care much for the adaptation which changes the story quite a bit. The screenplay was written by Roy Chanslor and it was directed by Roy William Neill. This was Neill's last film, he'd directed 108 titles in a career that started in 1917. I haven't seen most of his films, especially the silent ones, but I have seen several in the 1940s. You might have seen Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man and any of the 11 of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films he directed. I know I have all those films and should watch them again soon. Ha ha ha ha.

Musician and songwriter Dan Duryea was married to nightclub singer Mavis. She's blonde and a blackmailer. Dan tries to visit Mavis in her apartment but she's told the doorman not to let him in. She lets nightclub owner Peter Lorre come calling. She turns up dead the next day and Kirk Bennett is caught, tried and convicted. He'd been in her apartment but he didn't kill her. We know that and his wife Catherine, played by June Vincent, also thinks he innocent. Police detective Broderick Crawford can't find any evidence to clear Kirk who's getting closer and closer to the death chamber. June tries to find the real killer. She hooks up with Dan and they turn themselves into a nightclub act to try to get a job at Peter's nightclub. They hope to get some evidence on Peter. He's their lead suspect, after all he'd been seen going into Mavis's apartment on the night Mavis got snuffed out. That doesn't work out so well. Will Kirk make it off death row? You can find out at the link in the title. It's a nice tight story that scores a well deserved 7 on the IMDb. If you like a noir film you'd probably like this one. I did.

DCI Banks - Series 1

The first series of DCI Banks started airing September 16 2011 and the 3 stories are spread over 6 episodes. Stephen Tompkinson plays DCI Alan Banks and Andrea Lowe plays DS Annie Cabbott. 

The first story has someone set fire to a pair of house boats on a river. It leads DCI Banks and DS Annie Cabbott to the world of art fraud and a big ass sad family. In the second story Lucy Payne, from the pilot, is found with her throat cut. He body was left in the spot where they dug up the last missing woman. There's also a dead young woman in a storeroom off an alley. Then a cop is killed in the same way as Lucy was. There's more sad shit piled on top of that. In the 3rd story an armor car robber is found dead in his house. Banks gets asked by his boss, Chief Superintendent Rydell, to find his runaway teenage daughter Emily. Her mother found some topless pictures of Emily on the internet. Banks finds her hanging out with a known criminal and smut peddler but she doesn't want to go home. Later she turns up dead. Oh, well, sad for her, but she was really stupid, threatening the thugs. Then her father has some trouble and takes his own life. There's just one sad story after another with plenty of yelling and anger. It's all well made and the actors good. There's plenty of detecting and questioning the suspects. The stories are well told but there's  little humor which makes me less inclined to want to revisit them down the road. Kind of like how I felt about the Waking The Dead series. Interesting stories but hardly any humor and all the people seem to wind up yelling. I watched the first 6 series of that program but didn't bother with the rest. I won't watch them again either. I've already got Series 3 coming from the library so I'll take a look at that and see if I want to try Series 4. There aren't that many shows in it and I can get through a Series in a couple of evenings.

DCI Banks - Aftermath

Aftermath is the pilot film for the DCI Banks series on ITV. The series is based on the Peter Robinson novel of the same name. It's got Stephen Tompkinson as Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. I didn't recognize him from some of the other programs I've seen him in before but that's how things go. I haven't read the books and probably won't now that I've seen the TV show. It's got way more serious stories than I usually care for. In the first moments of the program a police man is killed by Marcus Payne. His partner knocks Payne out, chains him to a pipe, and smashes him repeatedly on the head. The attack took place in the basement where they find a dead girl strapped to a table. She'd been tortured and raped to death. There are 3 more dead girls, wrapped in plastic, in another room. The story gets worse and worse.

That's Stephen Tompkinson and Andrea Lowe. His Major Crime team has been investigating 5 missing young blond women and the basement has four of the five. Where's the fifth? Banks will eventually find out. Andrea plays DS Annie Cabbot, she's working for Professional Standards (Internal Affairs in the US), and she's there to investigate the cop who beat Marcus Payne. The guy's been in a coma but he dies and the cop gets charged for excessive force. Andrea tells her one thing will happen but the bosses have a different plan and the cop gets tossed out of the force but no charges will be filed. Lucy Payne, Marcus's wife, seems like the typical battered wife and she tells that story. There's plenty of clues to indicate that there's more under her surface. Banks digs it out. He breaks Lucy down and she leads them to the burial place of the missing woman. At the end of the story Banks requests Andrea come to work with his team. She had said she wanted to be a Detective and not in Professional Standards.

It's all sad and everyone seems angry all the time. There's a lot of yelling and crying. It's all well made and such but when you're done it's not very much fun. I wouldn't pick it over Midsomer Murders and I'm not going to watch it again. The library coughed up Series 1 of the show at the same time and I will watch that but from the descriptions of the episodes on the Wikipedia I'm not expecting it to be much more fun.

The Narrow Margin 1952

The Narrow Margin is a 1952 crime film with Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor and Jacqueline White. I didn't recognize the actors but I have seen McGraw and Windsor in several films over the years. It written by Earl Felton from a story by Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard. All three have penned films that I've seen and liked. It's directed by Richard Fleischer, the son of Max Fleischer, who directed several entertaining films. You might have seen 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, So This Is New York, Armored Car Robbery, Fantastic Voyage or Soylent Green. I hadn't seen the film before and since I was on a film noir kick I put in on my list from Netflix.

McGraw is a cop, he's riding a train with his partner, they stop in Chicago to pick up a woman who they are supposed to escort to Los Angeles. She's the wife of a mobster who's got a list of damning evidence. The partner is killed at her apartment but McGraw wings the shooter who runs off. McGraw gets Windsor to the train and he has to work hard to keep her under wraps. There's a couple of thugs that are after her and neither of them knows what she looks like. One of them makes an offer to McGraw to turn her over to them but he's not having any of their dirty money, the other thug is looking for his briefcase as a cover for his snooping.

McGraw and the crooks spar on the train, allies and villains pop in and out of the film, people aren't who you thought they were. McGraw meets a nice woman, White, who's travelling with her son and his nanny. It looks like the crooks think she might be who they are looking for. Things turn dicey on the train as the crooks get closer to Windsor. McGraw captures one but he gets away. At a stop one crook takes off and the guy who killed McGraw's partner boards the train. He's going to finish off McGraw and get that list. Things don't go so well for some people but you've got to expect some of that on this sort of film.

It's a short film, only 72 minutes, but they don't spend time on anything but story. It's a nice tight script with believable enough characters. The actors all do a fine job. It's really well shot and it looks great for a fairly low budget film. Worth a look for the fan and a film worth seeing again.

There's a commentary on the film by William Friedkin. He talks about the film and it's influence on him and other directors. Richard Fleischer appears in little recorded snippets from who knows where. Both men were informative and entertaining. There's a trailer for the film.

Science Fiction Sunday 347

The BBC did a remake of John Wyndam's novel The Day Of The Triffids in 2009. I found it on YouTube and watched it this morning. It's written by Patrick Harbinson and directed by Nick Copus. It's got Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, Eddie Izzard, Jason Priestley, Jenn Murray and Julia Joyce. The triffids are plants from the jungles of Zaire and bioengineered to generate fuel. They're dangerous man eaters that are kept in special farms where they produce oil. That fuel saved the world from global warming and things are fine until there's a massive solar eruption that blinds 95% of the people in the world. Then it's scramble, scramble, scramble as the world falls apart. The triffids get out and start moving about feeding on anyone they can catch. Dougray is one of the lucky few to have sight, he was in a hospital, his eyes all bandaged. Joely is a radio personality and she meets up with Dougray. Eddie was on a plane, asleep, when the flash blinded the rest of the plane. He survives the crash by taking all the life jackets and stuffing him and them into the bathroom. It's just one of many goofy things in the series.

Jason is an ex-Air Force man who tries to help the blind and Eddie joins up with him. They don't believe Dougray, whom they capture, about the triffids. They'll soon learn differently. Eddie takes over and tries to run things. He sends Dougray and Jason off to their doom but that doesn't go so well and they escape. They head for Dougray's father's place stopping at a church where they find Vanessa feeding the blind to the triffids because it's God's will. It also keeps the triffids at bay. Dougray puts a stop to that and Vanessa gets thrown out of the church.

Brian plays Dougray's father and he's got a solution to the triffids. Another triffid which that will fight the old triffids. Jo escapes Eddie and winds up at Brian's big manor house. Dougray winds up there with two little girls he finds along the way, They set up at Brian's to try to manufacture the anti-triffid plant, Jason flies over in a little plane and drops leaflets about a colony on the Isle of Wight. Brian didn't survive the movie, he's killed by the test triffid which is also killed. Poor Eddie shows up and fucks things up until he's killed by the triffids. No one will miss him.  Dougray figures out a cure, based on a remedy he'd seen in the jungle when he was a child and they all relocate to the Isle of Wight. Maybe there's hope for humanity but I wasn't caring that much by the end of the three hours.

The program isn't much better than average and it's not something that I needed to see, even though I like to see SF films in general. I've had a gander at the mini-series and I really wouldn't need to see it again. I did like the 1962 British film adaptation which you can see on YouTube also.

Friday Night Movies 538

Unknown was our first choice to watch. It's a 2011 British, German, French film with Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz, and Frank Langella. It got a script by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell. It's based on a 2003 French novel by Didier Van Cauwelaert called Out of My Head. Jaume Collet-Serra is the director, he's made a half dozen films, of which I've only seen his 2005 remake of House Of Wax. I don't much remember anything much about it, it has been 8 years since I've seen it. Mind you, I usually can't remember what I saw Friday night on Monday morning. Lucky for me I have a blog and I can go look it up.

Liam and January arrive in Berlin for a biotechnology summit. There's going to be a big announcement from Professor Bressler. He's got a corn that grows anywhere and it's worth a lot. Liam's a scientist too and January is his wife. Liam is going to the summit. As January checks in at the hotel, Liam finds they've left a bag at the airport. Without telling her what's he's doing Liam jumps into a cab and races back to the airport. Liam's cell phone won't connect and the cab falls into a river. Diane is the driver, she's an illegal alien, of the terrestrial kind sadly, and she runs off fearing deportation. Liam wakes up in the hospital 4 days later and has some trouble with his memory. Bits and pieces come back and he leaves to look up his wife. At the hotel January doesn't know who he is and there's another man, Aiden, saying he's Liam. He knows everything that Liam knows and poor Liam is mightily confused. Liam runs around trying to figure out what happened, he contacts Diane but she doesn't want to get in trouble, eventually he confronts the replacement Liam again. Liam is so agitated Aiden knows all he knows that he passes out and wakes up in the hospital.

An assassin comes looking for Liam and kills the nice nurse who got in his way. She had given Liam Bruno's name and address. Bruno is an ex-Stasi agent and he helps people find missing people. The assassin poison's Liam's IV but Liam escapes and looks up Bruno. Bruno offers some help and Liam connects with Diana again. She offers him a place to stay. Soon as they get settled at her apartment the assassins come calling. The pace starts to pick up and there's more action and chasing about. There's a couple of car chases and a lot of taxi cabs get trashed. The suitcase at the airport gives Liam more stuff to ponder about.

Frank turns up as an old pal of Liam's but he's another one with secret. Bruno figured out Frank is more than he appears to be and that Frank is in on the whole plot. More of Liam's past is revealed and he's surprised at what's really going on. It's a nice twist. The script is pretty well worked out, things fall into place a bit at a time, and the baddies get some fine deaths.

Good acting from most of the cast, I especially liked watching Bruno Ganz as the ex-Stasi agent. The sets and locations are a nice variety. Sure is a lot of graffiti on everything. I enjoyed it, it's a solid thriller with a bit of nice mind games going on. Worth a look and a re-watch for some.

Seventh Code is a 2014 Japanese film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Like our other film it starts off as one sort of story and ends as another thing. It stars Japanese Pop Idol Atsuko Maeda as a young woman in Vladivostok looking for a Japanese guy named Matsunaga she met onetime. He tells her he isn't interested in her but she's determined to keep following him. She gets befriended by the owner and chef of a small Japanese restaurant in the city. He has a Chinese girlfriend who leaves part way through the movie.

Good for her, the secret life of Atsuko and Matsunaga turns deadly for the chef. Reminds me that getting involved with strangers can be a dangerous game. It's a short film, 60 minutes, and there's a bit of action near the end. The script kept it's secrets well and the actors did a good job fooling me. Nice graffiti filled locations and plenty of them. I'd recommend it but it would be harder to find than most movies.

Deadline At Dawn 1946

Deadline At Dawn shares the same DVD as Backfire. It's a 1946 film that was directed by stage director Harold Clurman. I hadn't ever heard of him but the Wikipedia says that it was his only film. For a first time director he does very well. Nicholas Musuraca is his cinematographer and what a list of credits he has in a career that started in 1923 and ended in 1966. the two men work really well together. Clifford Odets provided the screenplay from a novella by Cornell Woolrich. I like what Woolrich I've read and some of his works have been adapted to films. His crime stuff usually aren't cops or private eyes versus the baddies but regular folks in over their heads. There's often a romance.

That's Susan Hayward and Bill Williams in the picture. Bill's a sailor who's travelling to the naval base in Norfolk. He's in New York City with time to kill so he has a few drinks and wakes up late in the evening. He's got a wad of cash and he wonders how he got it. He wants to return the money and dance hall girl Susan goes along to help him. They find the woman dead in her apartment. Bill figures he needs to find the real killer so he won't be blamed and Susan goes along with him. Marvin Miller is a blind pianist at a club. He's in love with the dead girl and he was supposed to get the money that wound up with Bill. He's just one of the possible suspects.

Susan and Bill get some help from Paul Lukas playing a cabbie. The investigation moves along and the police get involved. There's a bit of good cop, bad cop and Bill nearly gets booked for murder. More complications and the real murderer is revealed. It's a short film, 83 minutes, and it's all pretty solid story. They don't waste any of their minutes, cramming in murder, action, melodrama and romance. Another good one I was glad to see.

Backfire 1950

 

Backfire is a film noir from 1950. It's got a script by Larry Marcus, Ben Roberts, and Ivan Goff from a story by Marcus. Although Backfire was completed in October 1948, it was not released until January 1950. However, screenwriters Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts would go on to write White Heat the year after working on Backfire. Edmond O'Brien would also star in White Heat, as well as in the seminal film noir, D.O.A., in 1950. -Wikipedia. The movie is directed by Vincent Sherman and stars Edmond O'Brien, Virginia Mayo, Gordon MacRae, Viveca Lindfors, Sheila MacRae, Ed Begley and Dane Clark. Look for John Denher and Russ Conway in small parts.

Virginia is a nurse in a hospital for wounded veterans. Gordon is her patient. They've fallen for each other. Edmond is Gordon's pal from the army. The two guys plan to use their GI Benefit money to buy a ranch. Trouble is Gordon has to take it easy for a year or two so his back can heal up. Before the last operation Edmond takes off and isn't heard from again. Christmas eve, after he'd been doped up for the evening, a strange women comes and tells him Edmond is hurt so bad he wants to die. Gordon tells her "don't let him die" and passes out. No one saw the woman and they tell him that he had a hallucination. When he's healed up a couple of weeks later Gordon decides to go looking for Edmond.

 

Gordon is picked up by Police Captain Ed Begley who tells him that Edmond is wanted for murder. He doesn't believe it and goes on the hunt for clues. He meets Sheila and Viveca who tell him that Edmond went to work for a gambler who eventually tried to kill him. Virginia and Gordon continue to dig into what happened to Edmond. There's a bit of danger, some people don't make it to the end of the picture, all set in a nice setting. The movie moves along well and there's a good story with lots of little twists and turns. Another nice noir film what was worth seeing.

The Racket 1951

The Racket is a 1951 film with a screenplay by William Wister Haines and WR Burnett. It's a remake of a 1928 film which was based on a play by Bartlett Cormack. The Wikipedia says it was directed by John Cromwell with uncredited directing help from Nicholas Ray, Tay Garnett, Sherman Todd and Mel Ferrer. That's a lot of directors. The commentary by Eddie Mueller says that some reshoots were added after the movie wrapped. The movie was presented by Howard Hughes who was the Producer of the 1928 film. Hughes had taken over RKO in 1948. Robert Mitchum was on contract there and he had gotten a pot bust about the time Hughes had taken over.  Hughes stuck with him during his problem.

There's a great cast in the film and everyone does a good job. Robert Mitchum is a Police Captain who's been sent to the unimportant Precinct 7 by a corrupt government for closing down some gambling parlors. William Conrad plays Detective Turk and Ray Collins plays PA Welch. Both men are on the payroll of the "Old Man". He's the guy running things, the guy we never meet. Conrad, everyone should know, was the narrator on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. I really enjoyed him on his 1970s TV show Cannon where he played a private detective. I wouldn't mind seeing them again sometime. Collins would go on to play Lt Tragg on Perry Mason. William Talman plays a beat cop at Mitchum's Precinct. I'd just been watching him as DA Berger on Perry Mason. Robert Ryan plays an old school crime boss. He's having trouble with the modern crime syndicate running the town because of his heavy handed style. Lizabeth Scott plays a nightclub singer who's dating Robert Ryan's younger brother. Les Tremayne plays the chief investigator of the Crime Commission. Tremayne's Wikipedia page say he was in as many as 45 radio shows each week and he was once named one of the three most distinctive voices on American radio. The other two were Bing Crosby and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tremayne's in one of my favorite SF films. He's the town's newspaperman in The Monolith Monsters.

The movie is a battle between Mitchum and Ryan. They have a great onscreen chemistry. They play tough guys, the kind who can take a punch and return it in spades. They push back and forth at each other and people die. The syndicate loses control of Ryan and things get worse, especially after he shoots William Talman in the police station. That leaves Mitchum to settle the score with a nice little set up.

The script isn't perfect, there was a good bit of tinkering after the film was originally shot, but it still delivers a pretty good story about the battle with organized crime. It gets a 6.8 on the IMDb and I'd go along with that. Set wise it was fine, the production values were average to good. Cromwell does a good job directing and the movie moves along at a nice pace with little wasted time. I enjoyed it but I like a good cops against crooks movie. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes that sort of thing.

The commentary by Eddie Mueller has too many odd statements that make me think poorly about his ability as a crime film writer. Here's an example; a cop brings the murder weapon into the Captain's office and he says it's lousy with fingerprints. Mueller makes comment that the cop is carrying it barehanded, thus getting his fingerprints on it. It's obvious to me that they would have already pulled the prints off the gun, and printed them, so it wouldn't matter that he was holding the gun in his bare hands. Other times he's got interesting information to depart. That's the way it goes, huh.