TOKYO DRIFTER

Wow.

Just wow.

To say that TOKYO DRIFTER (1966) is like nothing you've ever seen before is to simultaneously employ an ancient, Social Security collecting cliche and to speak the plain, unvarnished truth. This film truly is one of a kind.

Ostensibly a Japanese Yakuza crime film, Seijun Suzuki's brilliant masterpiece mashes up multiple film genres. The whole film is cut to the beat of the French New Wave cinema movement, there are scenes that resemble Golden Age Hollywood musicals, and American Westerns are heavily referenced (there's a huge brawl in a Japanese night club that's been built to resemble an Old West saloon). When the hero, Phoenix Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) crouches and drops to one knee during shoot-outs, he recalls James Bond's signature, similar movement during the gun-barrel opening of the 007 films. And let's not forget the insane shout-out to THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939). Yep, TOKYO DRIFTER starts out in crisp, noirish black and white before switching to the kind of day-glo color scheme that made the 1966 BATMAN TV show such delirious eye-candy. Cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine drenches the screen with explosive color palettes. Everything, I mean everything is color coded from the costumes to the sets to the cars. Some scenes are shot with only one primary color (like the yellow night club sequences), while other scenes are such a riot of colors and hues, it looks like a paint factory exploded.

While the visuals are best watched behind a pair of cheap sun glasses, the narrative is, at times, completely incoherent. The jump cuts propel the action forward at a feverish pitch and there were several scenes that made me wonder, "did that really just happen?" The story involves Phoenix Tetsu's quest to protect his Yakuza boss, Kurata (Ryuji Kita) from rival mobsters who are out to gain an office building owned by the gangster. Yep, in this film, the Yakuza is more interested in real estate holdings and owning highly stylized night clubs than running drugs, prostitutes, gambling and other vices.

Like a Samurai warrior from ages past, Phoenix Tetsu must ultimately walk alone, devoid of a close relationship with the night club singer he loves and hunted by rival gangs. The action scenes are fast and furious and everything moves at such a breathless clip that a second viewing may be required for some viewers.

TOKYO DRIFTER is an absolutely must-see film. It's breathtaking in its' audacity and lets-try-anything sensibility and will absolutely blow you away.

Highest recommendation

ELSEWHERE AND ELSEWHEN

Groff Conklin was one of the best anthologizers of science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories in the twentieth-century. If an anthology had Cronklin's name on it, the reader could be sure they were about to read some really good stuff. But no anthology, no matter how well curated, is going to score 100% every time. Like the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get, which stories are going to be to your individual liking and which aren't.

Such is the case with ELSEWHERE AND ELSEWHEN (1968), a solid sampler of mid-century American science fiction selected from the pages of various science fiction magazines of the time. Of the nine stories contained within, there was only one that I didn't care for. One story was my favorite, while another ran a close second and the rest were all enjoyable. That's a pretty decent batting average in any one's book and your mileage (and tastes) may vary.

The only story I didn't care for was the lead off entry, SHORTSTACK by Walt and Leigh Richmond. It was originally published in ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION/SCIENCE FACT, December 1964. It's not terrible, it's just totally devoid of any dramatic tension.

The best story, in my estimation, was THINK BLUE, COUNT TWO from GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, February, 1963) by the late, great Cordwainer Smith. This was my first exposure to Smith's writing and I found it to be wonderfully stylish and narratively compelling. My second favorite story was EARTHMAN'S BURDEN (GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, October 1962) by the legendary Donald Westlake. Westlake, whether writing under his own name or as Richard Stark, is one of my favorite writers. I was unaware that he had ever written any science fiction and finding this little jewel of a tale was an unexpected delight. Sly humor in the Westlake style abounds in this one.

The remainder of the stories were all decent. None of the stories stand out as being either terrific or terrible but I enjoyed reading them. They are: HOW ALLIED (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, December 1957) by Mark Clifton, THE WRONG WORLD (GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, December 1960) by J.T, McIntosh, WORLD IN A BOTTLE (GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, October 1960 by Allen Kim Lang, TURNING POINT (IF SCIENCE FICTION, May 1963) by Poul Anderson, THE BOOK (GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, November, 1953) by Michael Shaara, and TROUBLE TIDE (ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION/SCIENCE FACT, May, 1965) by James H. Schmitz.

As you can see, the majority of stories originally appeared in GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, which is a sign of the high quality of the science fiction published by that magazine.

ELSEWHERE AND ELSEWHEN is definitely worth a read by any science fiction aficionado.

Thumbs up.

GANGSTER SQUAD

Sean Penn, with his putty nose and over-the-top theatrics, appears to be channeling his inner Al Pacino more than actually trying to portray real-life Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen in GANGSTER SQUAD (2013). Pacino, you may recall, played cartoon crime boss "Big Boy" in Warren Beatty's four-color fantasia DICK TRACY (1990). Pacino was absolutely out of control in that ambitious failure of a film and one can only wonder what an imaginary movie starring Pacino, Marlon Brando, William Shatner and Rod Steiger and directed by either Ken Russell or Oliver Stone might look like. I think the screen would literally explode (as would more than a few heads in the audience) from the amount of histrionically insane acting and directing on display. But I digress.

The fact is, Penn's portrayal of Cohen is entirely okay in the context of this action packed, cops and gangsters crime film. GANGSTER SQUAD  falls short of both Brian De Palma's THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987) and Curtis Hanson's L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997) in it's depiction of days-gone-by mobsters and molls. But it is nevertheless an extremely entertaining film, with a top-notch cast, brilliant production design and machine guns. Lots of machine guns.

Josh Brolin stars as square-jawed, straight-arrow cop John O'Mara. He's a WWII veteran looking for another war to fight and he absolutely cannot be bought. O'Mara is put in charge of the "Gangster Squad" by L.A. police chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte). Parker doesn't mind bending the rules to get Mickey Cohen before he controls all of the vice in Los Angeles. If GANGSTER SQUAD had been made forty years ago, Nolte would have played O'Mara with some character actor like Charles Durning playing Parker.

O'Mara recruits pretty boy Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) as his second-in-command. The rest of the squad is made up of Detective Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), Detective Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), Detective Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena) and Detective Max Kennard (Robert Patrick). Harris is wicked with a switch-blade, Keeler is the electronics brain of the outfit, bugging Cohen's house for inside information, Ramirez is a rookie anxious to prove himself while Kennard is the last of the old-time gunfighters who still carries a big iron on his hip. Not all of these men will survive the war against Cohen.

Caught in the crossfire is the beautiful Grace Faraday (Emma Stone). Grace is Cohen's etiquette teacher (she's not doing a very good job, frankly) who falls in love with Wooters.

Will Beall's screenplay, based on Paul Lieberman's non-fiction book of the same name, takes more than a few liberties with the truth while director Ruben Fleischer adds some visually stylish flourishes to scenes to add snap and excitement. GANGSTER SQUAD is brimming with period detail. The clothes, the cars, the music, the locations (some real, some digital), all evoke Los Angeles, 1949, in a way that only a Hollywood movie can. There are car chases and gun battles galore and while the film brought in a disappointing $46 million in North America (against a cost of $60 million), it's nevertheless a fun ride into a glamorous past populated by tough cops, vicious gangsters and beautiful women.

GANGSTER SQUAD is one of my new favorite guilty pleasures. Check it out.

THE DOUBLE MAN

I remember when THE DOUBLE MAN (1967) was released during the 1960s spy film craze. I didn't see it in the theaters when I was a kid and I'm glad I didn't. I would have been bored silly and watching this glacially paced "thriller" as an adult this afternoon didn't exactly give me a buzz either.

Yul Brynner stars as CIA Agent Dan Slater. He's the target of a diabolical plan by the Soviets, led by the always reliable Anton Diffring as Berthold, to replace him with an exact double. Slater's son is murdered in the Austrian alps (it's made to look like an accident), a tragedy which sends Slater, over the protests of his boss, Edwards (Lloyd Nolan), to Austria. Once there, Slater teams up with a former British agent, Wheatley (Clive Revill) and starts investigating. Slater meets the smoking hot Gina (Britt Ekland, who went on to become a Bond girl in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)). Finally, after a seemingly interminable amount of running time (this turkey's only 105 minutes long) in which we're treated to nice Alpine scenery, horrible rear screen process shots and interiors filmed in England, Slater is captured and replaced by his double. But before the double can be sent to the U.S., Slater escapes from the Russians and upsets the apple cart.

Brynner plays both roles as if suffering from severe constipation while it appears as if Lloyd Nolan shot all of his scenes in one day in a studio (he has no screen time with Brynner). Based on the Henry S. Maxfield novel LEGACY OF A SPY (1958), the screenplay by Alfred Hayes and Frank Tarloff spins the original material into a second rate Bond film wannabe. Both the title credits and score (by Ernie Freeman), look and sound like they belong in a Bond adventure. But they're not enough to enliven this tepid, turgid, frankly boring, spy movie.

The concept of a spy being replaced with an exact double was better utilized in THE SPY WITH MY FACE, the 1965 feature film comprised of two episodes of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. spliced together. And the use of ski cable cars and mountain top transfer stations as locations for action set pieces anticipates WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968) and ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969), both of which are far superior films.

THE DOUBLE MAN was director Franklin J. Schaffner's fourth feature film. After working in television, Schaffner began his directing career with THE STRIPPER (1963), followed by THE BEST MAN (1964) and THE WAR LORD (1965). Those three and DOUBLE MAN were merely warm-ups for what came next, a string of critically acclaimed box office blockbusters beginning with PLANET OF THE APES (1968), PATTON (1970), NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA (1971), PAPILLON (1973), ISLANDS IN THE STREAM (1976) and THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978).

As you can see, Schaffner made some great films in his career. Unfortunately, THE DOUBLE MAN wasn't one of them. Thumbs down.

SAVAGE STREETS

I found the book pictured above in an antiques store in Whitesboro, Texas, last summer. Whitesboro, in case you're wondering, is in far north Texas, just south of Oklahoma. I recognized William P. McGivern as an author I'd read and enjoyed and the price was right for this hardcover, book club edition: one dollar. I gladly paid the asking price.

SAVAGE STREETS (1959) is the fifth McGivern novel I've read in the last year or so. The other books have been THE DARKEST HOUR, THE BIG HEAT, ROGUE COP and SHIELD FOR MURDER. While those four books all dealt with cops and robbers, SAVAGE STREETS is something different.

This adult novel explores what happens when two major mid-century phenomena collide: juvenile delinquency and the sheltered, middle class life of the American suburbs. A group of JDs, the Chiefs, start small, extorting money from some of the children who live in the peaceful, tranquil, and restricted neighborhood of Faircrest. The boys are too terrified to identify their tormentors in a police line-up and without their identification, the police can't move against the thugs. Some of the men of the community then decide to take matters into their hands and things quickly escalate. There are beatings, a hit-and-run auto accident, the rape of a girl gang member and the death of one of Faircrest's residents. 

The hero of the tale, John Farrell, is a decent, honorable but nonetheless conflicted man. His son, Jimmy, was one of the victims of the gang and it's Farrell that delivers a brutal beating to one of the gang members. But when his neighbors conspire to cover-up the truth of the matter, he sees them revealed for what they really are.

SAVAGE STREETS rips the lid off of the idyllic, peaceful, protected American suburb, depicting the residents of Faircrest as a gang unto themselves, willing to do anything to protect their turf and their lifestyle. It's a blistering indictment of both the juvenile delinquents and the good suburbanites who harbor dark secrets of their own. Reminiscent of the best works of John D. MacDonald, SAVAGE STREETS pulls no punches in this complex study of men and women pushed to the breaking point, people who will do anything to survive.

Highly recommended.

THE WOMAN IN GREEN

Sherlock Holmes is one my top five all time favorite fictional characters. The other four are Doc Savage, James Bond, Superman and Conan the Barbarian. And of all of the many fine actors who have portrayed Holmes over the years in both films and television, Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal sleuth will always be my favorite, primarily because his was the first visual interpretation of the character I encountered, thanks to Saturday afternoon showings of his Holmes films on television when I was a kid.

Rathbone played Holmes, along with co-star Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, in fourteen feature films between 1939 and 1946. The first two films were produced by 20th Century Fox before the rights were acquired by Universal (my favorite Golden Age Hollywood studio) for the remaining twelve films. When Universal took over, the studio decided to move the characters forward in time from the Victorian era to present day, 1940s London. This allowed for Holmes to tangle with Nazis as villains and take advantage of then state-of-the-art technology. Rathbone and Bruce are still the classic Holmes and Watson but I must confess, I prefer Holmes material when it's set in the era in which he was created.

Nonetheless, THE WOMAN IN GREEN (1945), which I watched last night, is a solid little mystery thriller. It was the eleventh film in the Holmes series and features Henry Daniell (in his third Holmes film) as the diabolical Moriarty. The plot involves a series of murders of young woman, all of whom are found with a finger missing. It's a gruesome affair, to be sure, with the detached digits being used in a twisted blackmail scheme by Moriarty and his wicked femme fatale accomplice Lydia Marlowe (Hillary Brooke, also in her third Holmes film). The convoluted plot involves hypnosis and climaxes with a battle of the wills between Marlowe and Holmes as she attempts to hypnotize the intrepid sleuth into committing suicide.

THE WOMAN IN GREEN is directed with brisk efficiency by veteran Roy William Neill, who, in addition to helming several other Holmes films, directed the classic Universal horror film FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943). The screenplay by Bertram Millhauser, borrows material from two of Doyle's original stories, THE FINAL PROBLEM and THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE. A more accurate title for THE WOMAN IN GREEN would have been THE ADVENTURE OF THE SEVERED FINGERS but I doubt that would have gotten past the film censors of the 1940s. As it is, THE WOMAN IN GREEN is a fun film featuring my all time favorite Holmes actor in the role he was born to play.

Thumbs up.

CRUEL GUN STORY

I recorded CRUEL GUN STORY (1964) off of TCM a couple of months ago and saved it, waiting for the chance to watch it with my buddy Kelly Greene. We got that chance yesterday and boy, was it worth the wait.

CRUEL GUN STORY is the second Japanese neo-noir film I've watched recently, following the brilliant A COLT IS MY PASSPORT (1967). Like COLT, CRUEL was produced by Nikkatsu Studios, which was to Japanese crime films what Toho Studios was to Godzilla movies. And both film star Joe Shishido as driven, tough-as-nails criminals.

CRUEL GUN STORY is, on the surface, a standard heist film. Togawa (Shishido), is sprung from prison by crime boss Matsumoto (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi) to engineer a daring caper: steal 120 million in yen from an armored car The money is from the racetrack where the Japan Derby is held.

Togawa wants his share of the money to finance an operation for his crippled sister, Rie (Chieko Matsubara). The doctors tell him she'll never walk again even with the surgery, but Togawa is determined to do everything he can to take care of the young woman. Togawa blames himself for her condition. Rie was hit by a truck and Togawa, fueled with rage and frustration, sought out the truck driver and crippled him in revenge.

Togawa assembles a team including his friend Shirai (Yuji Odaka), the only man he really trusts. The other two men, a boxer and a gambler/junkie, are untrustworthy but necessary to pull off the heist. A minute-by-minute plan is conceived and put into motion.

You can see where this is going, right?

After things go wrong, Togawa and his men are on the run with Matsumoto and his gang on their trail and out for blood. There are some spectacularly staged shoot outs and the body count keeps going up and up and up. CRUEL GUN STORY is one brutal, nihilistic film with only one character left alive at the end of the film. And it's not one of the gangsters.

Director Takumi Furukawa keeps the action moving at a brisk pace. There's a jazzy score that lends an urgency to the narrative, the location work is first rate and all of the main characters are well drawn, especially Togawa, a brutal man who lives (and dies) by his own code of honor.

CRUEL GUN STORY is a dazzling piece of 1960s Japanese crime cinema. It makes a great double bill with A COLT IS MY PASSPORT.

Highest recommendation.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE

Random thoughts while watching LONE WOLF McQUADE (1983).

Ennio Morricone called. He wants his score from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969) back.

Sergio Leone's probably not too happy with all of those tight close-ups of squint eyed heroes and villains that director Steve Carver shamelessly appropriates either.

How tough is Lone Wolf McQuade (Chuck Norris)? He has a pet wolf.

McQuade's a Texas Ranger but he doesn't wear regulation clothes. And his firearms are definitely not State of Texas approved.

McQuade wants to be seen as a Dirty Harry type character. This is represented by his filthy dirty, mud-caked SUV, his pigsty of a home and his cluttered office. He's also saddled with a young, rookie DPS Trooper, Kayo Ramos (Robert Beltran) as a partner, just as Harry was in all of his films.

Barbara Carrera was smoking hot. She would have made a great Bond girl.

Nice to see Sharon Farrell (as McQuade's ex-wife). One of my favorite '60s heart-throbs.

Gotta love the great L.Q. Jones who plays McQuade's mentor and newly retired Ranger, Dakota. But come on, a man named Dakota? I thought that name was strictly reserved for strippers and porn stars.

Also good to see R.G. Armstrong as Ranger Captain Tyler. It looks like Armstrong probably worked two days on the shoot, one day for interiors, one for exteriors but he's always fun to watch even with limited screen time. He looks very much like a man named Dee Scott, a house painter that I worked with on my summer job when I was in high school and college. Mr. Scott taught me a lot about house painting, Clint Eastwood and Paul Harvey. I owe him big time.

Pearl beer is to McQuade what spinach is to Popeye. In one sequence, McQuade is buried alive in his SUV. He's trapped in the remarkably well-lit cabin of the vehicle and he uses a can of Pearl (brewed in Texas in the land of 1100 springs), to revive himself (he drinks some, splashes the rest on his head). Then McQuade fires up his Batmobile-like, super-charged engine and drives the SUV out of the grave.

Pearl is also the only thing keeping McQuade alive. He's never shown eating food of any kind and the only other beverage he consumes is a can of Coke.

Search warrants? Probable cause? Suspects' rights? Forget about 'em. McQuade and Kayo nab a two-bit criminal named Snow (William Sanderson) and, along with Dakota, torture the man for information. As Dirty Harry said, "I'm all broken up about that man's rights."

Now would probably be a good time to mention that one of the villains of the piece is a Mexican, wheelchair bound midget named Falcon (Daniel Frishman), who looks like a miniature Orson Welles and has a revolving wall getaway in his "secret hideout" (actually, his office at the local horse track).

You know the bad guys are in deep shit when they kill McQuade's wolf.

They're in even deeper shit when they kidnap his daughter.

It's a mystery to me how someone like Chuck Norris ever became popular. He's an absolutely terrible actor, he has no charisma or screen presence whatsoever. His entire film and television career was based solely on his martial arts abilities and his unrelenting drive to play straight arrow tough guys. I know he has a lot of fans but I'm not one of them.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE looks like it was cheaply made. I don't know the actual dollar amount of the budget, but the film made over $12 million worldwide, which is a pretty good return on investment.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE is also PG rated. There's no sex or nudity and all of the violence and gun play is remarkably blood free. I would have preferred a more realistic, R rated film but apparently Norris lobbied for the PG rating in order to make the film accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Smart move.

David Carradine was cast as the main bad guy for one reason and one reason only. It's so he and Norris can stage a climactic kung-fu battle to the death at the end of the film. Carradine uses a lot of the moves he used in his ABC television series, KUNG-FU and while this showdown looks great on paper, it's staged in a spectacularly unimaginative way by director Carver. Ho-hum.

Did I mention the Mexican midget in the wheelchair?

Love how McQuade, Kayo and FBI Agent Jackson (Leon Isaac Kennedy) drive into Mexico (a sovereign, foreign nation) with a truck load of weapons, ninety-percent of which they abandon in a small border town as they set out on foot towards the bad guys hideout and can only take what they can carry. That's a helluva lot of firepower left unaccounted for in a foreign country.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE was the inspiration for Norris's long running CBS television series WALKER, TEXAS RANGER (a series I never watched). The character was changed, of course, but the premise is still the same.

By the way, the Texas Rangers are primarily an investigatory agency. They would never sanction the shoot first, ask questions later approach that McQuade uses at the beginning of the film when he single-handedly guns down (with an Uzi!) a gang of horse thieves.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE is a B movie all the way, the kind of cheap, long-on-action-short-on-plot fodder that filled movie screens across the country in the 1980s. It helped cement Norris's reputation as an action star and box-office draw and it gave work to some good actors in supporting roles. It's a hoot from beginning to end and is recommended only to those viewers who are open to reveling in cinematic cheese from time to time.

And in case you missed it, there's a Mexican midget in a wheel chair.

ROGUE COP

I finished reading ROGUE COP (1954) yesterday evening. It's one of several crime novels by William P. McGivern that I've read over the last year or so. McGivern was a very good writer and I have yet to be disappointed with any of his books.

In ROGUE COP, tough, two-fisted cop Mike Carmody takes graft and bribes from local crime bosses Beaumonte and Ackerman. When Carmody's brother Eddie (also a cop), witnesses a mob related murder, his testimony can blow open a major crime syndicate operation. Beaumonte and Ackerman put pressure on Mike to get Eddie not to testify but Eddie, unlike his brother, is a straight arrow cop who refuses to give in to the mob's demands. The pressure on Mike is increased and he's confident he can get Eddie to eventually come around.

But that never happens because Eddie is gunned down by an out-of-town hit man. Eddie's death sends Mike on a trail of revenge as he starts his own investigation to gather evidence that will bring the crime bosses down, even it means the end of his career as a cop. Or his life.

ROGUE COP is a swiftly paced, "down and dirty" crime novel that kept me turning the pages at a rapid clip. There's nothing new here, either thematically or narratively. But it's a good story nonetheless and McGivern spins his yarn with style, mixing solid characterizations with brutal violence as Carmody seeks vengeance.

ROGUE COP was filmed in 1954. The cast includes Robert Taylor, Janet Leigh, George Raft, Steve Forrest and Anne Francis. It was directed by Roy Rowland. I haven't seen this noir but based on the quality of the book, I'll definitely have to track down the film version to see how they compare.

Thumbs up.

WARLOCK

Any Western that features Whit Bissell, L.Q. Jones, DeForest Kelley and Frank Gorshin in supporting roles is a winner in my book. And when the top billed stars are Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn and Dorothy Malone, well, that's just icing on the cake.

Such is the case with WARLOCK, Edward Dmytryk's 1959 CinemaScope Western. Beautifully shot by Cinematographer Joseph MacDonald, this adult, psychological Western is short on action but long on compelling, conflicted characters, all of whom are seeking some measure of redemption in the small mining town of Warlock, Utah some time in the early 1880s. The town is at the mercy of a ruthless gang of cowboys led by Abe McQuown (Tom Drake). Among the members of the gang are Johnny Gannon (Widmark), his brother Billy (Gorshin) and Curley Burne (Kelley). When the acting deputy is run out of Warlock by the gang, the town council decides to hire a notorious gunfighter, Clay Blaisedell (Fonda), to protect the town for a price. Blaisedell arrives with his crippled partner, Tom Morgan (Quinn), who sets up a casino in the town. Things take a turn when Johnny Gannon decides to go straight and becomes the official town deputy. It then becomes a question of which man is the real law in Warlock, the hired killer or the duly appointed rookie with a badge.

To complicate matters, Blaisedell meets and falls for Jessie Marlow (Dolores Michaels) and decides to quit the gunfighter business and settle down. Morgan, who is revealed as the real power behind Blaisedell, wants none of that. And to add insult to injury, Morgan's old flame, Lilly Dollar (the luscious Malone), has arrived in town and soon takes a spark to Gannon.

Things come to an explosive climax when all of these characters and their various motivations collide. Someone has to rid the town of the bad guys and someone has to prove themselves as the ultimate authority in Warlock and that someone might not be just one person.

The screenplay by Robert Alan Arthur (from the novel by Oakley Hall), is literate and thought-provoking. All of the main characters are well drawn and interesting and themes of law and lawlessness drive the narrative. Every way you look at it, WARLOCK is a first class film.

Highly recommended. 

BREAKTHROUGH

Comprised of tons of authentic combat cinematography and battle action filmed in  California, BREAKTHROUGH (1950) is a well mounted Warner Brothers B war picture. The narrative follows an American infantry unit through training in England, to the June 6th, 1944 invasion of Normandy and on to the brutal foot-by-foot battles through German held hedgerows in France.

There's nothing here you haven't seen before but that in no way diminishes the pleasures to be found in this tough, gritty war film. David Brian gets top billing as Captain Hale, the commanding officer of the unit. He's led his men through the hells of North Africa and Sicily and is beginning to show signs of combat fatigue. Hale takes out his frustrations on a young greenhorn lieutenant, Joe Mallory (science fiction genre icon John Agar), who can do only wrong in Hale's eyes. Mallory is comforted and aided by grizzled Sergeant Pete Bell (Frank Lovejoy), who knows a thing or two about both the old man and combat tactics. The other members of the unit are played by bit players with the only recognizable (to me at least), names and faces belonging to William Campbell (believe it or not, my father's name!) and Matt Willis (who bears an uncanny resemblance to U.S. Senator John McCain). Mallory earns his stripe in battle while Hale eventually is relieved of field command and sent back to headquarters. The unit now belongs to Mallory and after liberating St. Lo, it's on to Berlin.

Directed by Lewis Seiler with a screenplay by Joseph Breen Jr, Bernard Girard and Ted Sherdeman, BREAKTHROUGH delivers the stock characters and well staged war action that fans of the genre want. Thumbs up.

BOWDRIE

I finished reading BOWDRIE this morning. It's the second Louis L'Amour book I've read recently after being given a couple of boxes full of Western paperbacks by my mother-in-law a couple of months back. Published in March, 1983, BOWDRIE is a collection of eight short stories starring Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie. The stories are interspersed with factoids about Texas Ranger history. The stories all first appeared in various issues of the pulp magazine POPULAR WESTERN published from 1946 to 1950. L'Amour, a young writer just beginning his career in the pulps, had his name on the cover of only three of the issues that featured his work that is reprinted here. But here we are, more than seventy-years later and it's L'Amour whose work is still in print while most of the other authors whose stories appeared in those magazines, L'amour's "stablemates" (pardon the pun), are almost all forgotten except to hardcore devotees of the pulp Western genre.

There's nothing remarkable in these formulaic stories except to show a writer learning his craft and, most importantly, selling his stuff, even if it was for only a penny a word. Chick Bowdrie is a typical L'Amour hero, a Texas Ranger who could have become an outlaw but was instead recruited into the ranks of the most famous law enforcement agency of the Old West (an organization that continues to this day). In each story, Bowdrie rides into a small town in pursuit of some bad guy. He quickly encounters a sizable cast of characters, most of them sporting colorful names. One of them is the man he seeks, while there's almost always a pretty girl to tempt Bowdrie into settling down. Bowdrie, a expert tracker, plays detective fairly well, gathering clues and evidence and revealing the culprit at the climax of the story wherein the bad guy draws his gun on Bowdrie only to be struck down by the lawman's faster gun hand. His job done, it's on to the next assignment as Bowdrie rides off into the sunset.

Bowdrie has no family and no home. Wherever he rides, he does so alone. I guess that makes him a "lone" Ranger.

BOWDRIE is a nice collection of good pulpy Western action. Thumbs up.

TWISTED

Picked up this beauty for three bucks at the Taylor Antiques Mall on Memorial Day. TWISTED (May, 1962) is one of several horror anthologies published by Belmont books during the same time period. It's also one of many science fiction/fantasy/horror anthologies edited by Groff Conklin, one of the best anthology editors of the 20th century.

Like all anthologies, the stories in TWISTED are a mixed bag. There are familiar names here such as Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft sharing space with lesser known writers. I'll confess straight up that I only read a few pages of the Lovecraft story, THE SHUNNED HOUSE. I just can't get into Lovecraft, try as I might. I did read all of the other stories however. 

THE TELL TALE HEART, the Poe classic, I'd read before but all of the other stories were new to me. The stories I liked include TELL TALE HEART, THE PLAYGROUND by Ray Bradbury, THE THING IN THE CELLAR by David H. Keller, THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN'T QUITE by William W. Stuart, NIGHT DRIVE by Will F. Jenkins, MRS. MANIFOLD by Stephen Grendon, IMPULSE by Eric Frank Russell (my favorite of the lot), BRENDA by Margaret St. Clair and THE WORLD WELL LOST by Theodore Sturgeon. Stories that just didn't work for me include THE OTHER HAND by George Langelaan, THE DIARY OF A MADMAN by Guy de Maupassant, THE UPTURNED FACE by Stephen Crane (my least favorite), THE SONG OF MARYA by Walter M. Miller, Jr and A HOLY TERROR by Ambrose Bierce

That's nine winners and six losers but another reader might rank these tales differently. All in all, a fine little collection of weird tales. Recommended.

ARIZONA

There are several things about ARIZONA (1940) that lift it above the category of a routine Western. To begin with, it's a proto-feminist film with actress Jean Arthur receiving top billing. Granted, she was older and a more established star than co-star William Holden but the film is hers from beginning to end. There's a nifty up screen title credit crawl that surely must have influenced George Lucas when he made STAR WARS in 1977. It took two cinematographers to shoot the film, Fayte Browne and Harry Hallenberger, one of them handling exteriors, while the other was in charge of interiors. Composer Victor Young received an Academy Award nomination for Original Music Score (which plays heavily on the musical motif of the old song "I Dream of Jeannie"). And finally, the small town set for old Tucson was built for this film outside of the real Tucson and remains standing to this day. It has been used in countless television shows and Western films.

ARIZONA is the story of Phoebe Titus (Arthur), a flinty young woman determined to make her fortune in the wild and rugged Arizona territory of 1861. She has her sights set on owning a ranch and is working towards that goal by baking and selling pies to the citizens of Tucson. But she needs more money than the pie business can generate so Phoebe goes into a partnership with Solomon Warner (Paul Harvey), who runs a freight business.

Phoebe meets young Peter Muncie (Holden), who rides into town with a wagon train of settlers. She offers him a job running freight for her but Muncie declines (despite his attraction to Phoebe), because of his wanderlust and desire to go see California first before settling in Arizona. Muncie rides away from Tucson and out of the picture for a good while as director Wesley Ruggles doesn't follow him to the west coast. The action remains on Phoebe and her struggles in Tucson.

Phoebe becomes involved with Jefferson Carteret (Warren William), a smooth talking con artist who secretly robs Phoebe of her money for the ranch and then loans it back to her. Carteret is a mustache-twirling, Snidely Whiplash villain from the old school. In this case, he literally DOES own the deed to her ranch. By the way, William would have made a terrific Lamont Cranston if any studio had chosen to produce a source material accurate feature film version of the pulp hero The Shadow in 1940.

Muncie returns from California as a Union solider. The romance is rekindled and a marriage is planned but first, Phoebe asks Muncie to ride to Nebraska to buy 500 head of cattle for her ranch. He obliges and once again leaves the film for a good portion of running time. We don't see him again until he returns with the cattle only to be challenged by a band of Apaches (employed by Carteret) who try to steal the beeves. The cattle are saved and Phoebe and Muncie are finally married but there's still a score to settle with Carteret. Phoebe begs Muncie to let the law (in the laughable form of Judge Bogardus (Edgar Buchanan)) handle the problem but this being the old West, Muncie is determined to mete out his own form of frontier justice.

A gunfight between Muncie and Carteret is set up but once again, director Ruggles cuts away from Muncie and the action to a tight close-up on Phoebe's face, strained with apprehension and worry, while she hears a series of gun shots in the street outside of the general store. We don't know who the victor of the gunfight is until a wounded Muncie appears in the doorway. It's interesting that instead of showing one of the genre's most established tropes (the gunfight in the street), Ruggles stays focused on Phoebe instead, emphasizing once again that this is her story.

Still, as liberated a woman as Phoebe clearly is, she still has to rely on a man with a gun to save her from financial ruin. Once Carteret is killed, Phoebe and Muncie are finally free to begin their new life together on her beautiful new ranch.

William Holden was in his early 20s when he made ARIZONA. He was a young actor establishing his credentials in Hollywood while Jean Arthur was a well established (and much older) star. Arthur is lovingly shot through soft filters throughout the film in an effort to disguise her years. The trick works (mostly), and she comes off as a lovely, feisty and determined woman who lets nothing stand in the way of her dream.

ARIZONA is a rousing, old-fashioned Western adventure with a solid cast and first rate production values. Recommended.