I’ve come to look forward to a new book by J. D. Rhoades. A fellow North Carolinian, most of his work is set in the state, the thrillers anyway(he also does a bit of SF and fantasy). BROKEN SHIELD is a sequel to BREAKING COVER, his 2008 thriller. This time, however, Tim Buckthorn, a deputy sheriff of Gibson County, is the main focus, Tony Wolf a supporting character.
It begins after tornadoes had laid a wide swath of waste to across two states. A photo is found of a young girl tied to a chair when a woman is cleaning the junk deposited in her yard.
The FBI gets involved, in the person of Tony Wolf and his partner, Leila Dushane, and the trail sends them to Tennessee and a deep south criminal organization tied in with an ex-Irish terrorist.
And ultimately Buckthorn on a hunting mission!
J. D. Rhoades knows how to write an action scene, pacing, and a high energy conclusion. Couple that with a smooth writing style and you get a thriller that one can’t help racing through.
Recommended highly for all thriller lovers. Can be had HERE.
This past Friday I covered Lou Cameron’s original novel based on The Outsider. Today I thought to post on the pilot for the series. Written by Roy Huggins, best known for Maverick, 77 Subset Strip, The Fugitive, and The Rockford Files. For my money anyway, THE OUTSIDER ranks among the top three P.I. series. Most agree, though not always in the same order. The character’s name is David Ross.
The pilot, which appeared in 1967, opens with L. A. at night, a mass of car headlights moving, then to a pair sailing along on a lonely road, the forward with blinking headlights. A bit of voice over narration by McGavin informs us he’s in the one with the blinkers on. The car stops and a man gets out. We only see him from the waist down. “That’s not me,” McGavin says as the back car door open and him half fall out, unconscious. “That’s me.”
The man and a woman from the trailing car wrestle him into the front seat and push the car off a hillside. Ross comes to and begins steering as best he can, but the car flips and roll numerous times, coming to a rest at the bottom on it’s side, then catching fire. McGavin’s narration continues with “You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation.”
From there the story flashes back to tell us.
Ross had been hired by Marvin Bishop to check out one of his employees, Carol, on the quiet. He’d heard rumors that she was spending more than she earned and he wanted proof before he blew the whistle. We got the idea there was more to the story. So did Ross. Bishop visits him the morning after he trails Carol around. She met with a man, Colin, who hasn’t much history other than shaking down homosexuals.
Ross figures what’s really, Bishop is having an affair with Carol and wants to know if she’s stepping out on him. Ross can’t figure Colin though and keeps following the couple, though not good at the job as he thought. That’s brought violently to him when he suddenly has piano wire tight around his throat and Colin wanting to know why he’s following them. The only thing that saves him is Carol screaming and running off, Colin dropping him to follow. Ross rolls under a car before they return.
He heads first to Colin’s place, empty, then heads to Carol’s where he finds her dead on her bed. It’s only been fifteen minutes or so since the piano wire incident. Ross calls the cops, gives his name ans explains, letting them know he won’t be there. His voice is a little rough, his throat bleeding, and he has a date with a few stitches. Before he can leave, the phone rings, he picks it up, and recognizes Colin, the background full of dance music.
Hitting the clubs with his sometime girl friend, rich Honora, he finds him in one with another girl. A fight in the parking lot soon follows and he leaves Colin for the police. Unfortunately he has an alibi that Ross unwittingly corroborates. He was in a club at the time of the murder. Not satisfied, Ross is out to prove the alibi is faked and goes to the club asking around. There he sees Colin come in with Bishop’s personal secretary, a pretty blonde.
Now he really wants to find out what’s going on.
In the course of the film, Ross is nearly garroted, is drugged, slugged in back of the head, shot at, and returns fire, killing the shooter. By the time the pilot was okayed for series, NBC was screaming for changes. Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in June of 1968. They wanted his gun gone and the violence toned down.
The show lasted one season, twenty-six one hour episodes, and was highlighted by fine writing. A pity it could have lasted more seasons.
As always on Tuesdays, drop in on Todd Mason at SWEET FREEDOM for all the latestr overlooked movies, TV, and other related items.
THE OTHER PILOT is a tense, well plotted thriller about an Air Force pilot, Captain Boyd Chailland, on a crash investigation that killed a general. He learns that the general was a fake and had been since 1975 as he rose through the ranks.
The investigation leads to corruption, fraud, and treason at the highest levels of the American government. The title character is a mysterious man leaking all these secrets for his own reasons and the exciting finale, illustrated on the cover, has a two WWII planes, a Mustang and a Messerschmidt, in a dog fight over Dallas with Air Force One the prize they are fighting over.
Author Ed Baldwin knows his stuff, having served thirty-eight years in the Air Force with aircrew duty in every sort of plane over every continent but Antarctica, retiring in 2009 as an Air Force Flight Surgeon.
I really like his style of writing. He kept me turning the pages until the end, accelerating all the way.
Highly recommended and available HERE. Ed Baldwin’s website is HERE.
TELL IT TO THE MARINES debuted in New York City on December 23, 1926 and was the second highest grossing film of 26/27, also star Lon Chaney’s biggest film of his career. MGM brought in a Marine general, Smedley D, Butler for technical asistance. Three films were shot concurrently, Pathe’s THE FIGHTING MARINE(with Gene TUNNEY) and Fox’s WHAT PRICE GLORY, leading to disagreements over who could claim the rights to the name of The U. S. Marines.
Lon Chaney, sans makeup, played drill Sgt. O’Hara and William Haines is “Skeet” Burns, a recruit he’s trying to train. Burns slips away early and heads to Tia Juana for horse races, but returns to sign up. An early card describes Skeet in this manner. “The biggest improvement to Kansas City was when Skeet left to join the Marines.”
We have a love triangle develop when Skeet spots a Navy nurse, Norma Dale)Eleanor Boardman), and tries an assortment of tricks to impress her. She rebuffs him at every turn. O’Hara is interested as well. She seems to succumb when she prevails on O’Hara to take Skeet along on a training cruise. O’Hara is reluctant because of Skeet’s attitude and things don’t go well when he picks a fight with a sailor, who just happens to be the ship’s boxing champ.
We next find the pair part of a mission to Tondo Island, “six miles this side of Hell,” where a native girl is attracted to Skeet. He changes his mind, precipitating a brawl with the natives and rescue by O’Hara. Norma gets wind of it and a breaks up with Skeet by letter. He blames O’Hara, wrongly, for telling to improve his chances with the nurse.
All three end up further into the Pacific, all the way to Shanghai where Norma and her fellow nurses are dealing with an epidemic. A bandit army threatens the city and fighting breaks out. where Skeet distinguishes himself after O’Hara is wounded and he refuses to leave his boss until they are rescued.
All’s well in the end.
George W. Hill directs this film which some say isn’t much more than a Marine recruitment film. I enjoyed it. Lon Chaney without makeup is one thing that made it most interesting.
For more overlooked movies, drop in on Todd Mason, Tuesdays, over at SWEET FREEDOM.
I got to thinking about this show the last couple of days as I’m reading the collection of short stories, LEE(the review will appear tomorrow), based on the actor Lee Marvin. M SQUAD was my first encounter with the actor probably shortly after the show began. It had a run from 1957-60 on NBC television and our family got our first TV along about ’57, a gift from the man my mother was seeing at the time, who later became our stepfather.
The show was a police drama starring Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger of Chicago. M Squad helped out other divisions battling organized crime and other major illegal activities in the city. Produced by Marvin’s production company, Pall Mall was it’s main sponsor and the actor himself appeared in many of it’s commercials.
A number of later big name stars appeared in episodes, including Charles Bronson, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, Burt Reynolds, Don Rickles, James Coburn, and Angie Dickinson.
An episode featuring a Chicago cop taking a bribe led Mayor Richard J. Daley to block any future shows or features from filming in Chicago, a ban that held until THE BLUES BROTHERS. The format and style also inspired the theme song and Leslie Neilsen’s character, Lt. Frank Drebin, of the POLICE SQUAD series and movies. That theme song was composed by Count Basie.
117 thirty minute black and white episodes were produced. Here’s the first episode, one presumes the pilot, though I’m not sure things were done that way back then.
Marvin had already appeared in movies, most of the time as a villain, and this show helped his star appeal. His Oscar for Cat Ballou made him a superstar though.
As always on Tuesdays, drop in on SWEET FREEDOM where Todd Mason does the gathering.
I’m always leery when I see the word reimagined attached to something I like. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I took book in hand to read. I’ve read all of Baum’s Oz books, a number by his successor, Ruth Plumly Thompson(who actually ended up writing more than Baum). and a few by other writers over the years.
Though these are distinctly different from most of the Oz titles, I’m happy to say I was pleased with OZ REIMAGINED: NEW TALES FROM THE EMERALD CITY AND BEYOND. A number of different writers take a crack at the legends, elaborating and expanding on them, adult takes on some of the characters, as well as a few original ones thrown into the mix.
Writers involved include Tad Williams(who weaves one around his own Otherland series), Orson Scott Card, Jonathan Maberry, Simon R. Green, David Farland,Jane Yolen, and Jeffrey Ford. These authors I was familiar with and their were others new to me. All good though.
The book was edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen with a forward by Gregory Maguire, author of his own Oz-inspired series, WICKED. They all tell you right up front that these stories are not for the very young(young adult and up is best).
I enjoyed these and highly recommend the book. It can be ordered HERE.
The film BETWEEN TWO WORLDS was based on a play titled Outward Bound that ran in 1924 and had a brief revival in 1938. A 1930 film titled the same followed and this film is a remake of that first effort. It’s a story of a diverse group of people fleeing war-torn London on board a cruise liner. There’s a couple Henry Bergner(Paul Henreid) and his wife Anne(Eleanor Parker) who know the truth.
Henry Bergman is an Austrian pianist turned resistance fighter. he’s lost his touch at the piano, a nervous condition. He wants to get out of London, but doesn’t have an exit permit and can’t get one for six months. His wife Anne is looking for him and, at the outside of the steamship office, witnesses a carload of passengers headed for their ship take a direct him from a bomb during an air raid. Obliterated.
Returning to their apartment, Anne finds Henry has decided to commit suicide. Blocking all the windows and turning on the gas, he wants her to leave, but she says she would rather be with him.
They next find themselves on a strange ship, mostly deserted, and recognizes the handful of passengers as the ones she saw killed in the bombing. As the pair chose to die, they seem to be the only ones that realize they’re all dead. A ship steward, Scrubby(Edmund Gwynn) urges them to remain silent. Each must come to the conclusion themselves. “Where are we sailing?” Anne asks and is told by Scrubby, “Heaven? Hell? Wherever you’re bound.”
The list of passengers encompass all sorts. A cynical reporter(John Garfield), a man who’d been fired for writing exposes of another of the group. At one point, he says his epitaph should red “Here lies Prior. Wifeless, Childless. Wishing his father had died the same.” Mr Lingley (George Coulouris) is a ruthless millionaire who stepped on a lot of people building his fortune. He’s deathly afraid and when separated earlier from his two bodyguards tries to buy Bergner’s services, continually upping the price until Anne urges him to accept it in order to give Lingley peace of mind. A kindly old woman(Sara Allgood) who always wanted a cottage by the sea. A timid priest(Dennis King) who wants to help his fellow man. An odd-ball couple(Gilbert Emery and Isobel Elson), she a shallow social climber who cheats on her husband, a wealthy man who is a decent sort. The reporter’s girl friend(Faye Emerson) is a wealth seeking actress who’d spurned him in order to get next to Lingley. And the merchant marine(George Tobias) headed home to see his new baby for the first time. He considers himself lucky because he’s survived three ships sank by U-boats.
The first to learn the truth is Prior, the newsman, when he overhears Henry and Anne talking on deck. He takes great delight in revealing to all in an impromptu magic show, burning Lingley’s money and shooting him with his own gun. To no effect of course.
The secret out, The Examiner(Sidney Greenstreet), a deceased Reverend, puts in an appearance. He’s there to decide the fates of all the passengers, each being consigned to their proper fate. It’s not good for a lot of them.
An unusual film that I thought was pretty decent.
For more overlooked films and related matters, check in on Yodd Mason over at his spot, SWEET FREEDOM.
I once made a comment elsewhere that the spaghetti genre was made up of films good, bad, and very ugly(pun intended). HIS NAME WAS KING falls somewhere between bad and very ugly. Not a great film, but not nearly as bad as other reviews I’ve read. It stars Richard Harrison as John ‘King’ Marley, a bounty hunter looking for the Benson brothers, four men who smuggled guns into Mexico. They’d hijacked a shipment that included Winchesters, ammunition, dynamite, and six Gatling guns.
He walks into a trap early in the film when he got word that the brothers were waiting in a certain area, only to find four other men. When he asks where they are, a voice behind him says “One of them is right here with a gun on you.” He surrenders his rifle to the Benson brother.
But he hadn’t really walked into a trap. When the brother tries to kill him with his own rifle, he learns it’s not loaded, just a second before he dies, along with the four others.
Marley didn’t like criminal types because they’d killed his parents. Those feelings get ramped up when the remaining three Bensons follow his brother and his new bride, bursting in on the bedroom and rape the bride, kill the brother, and let her take the buggy back to town. They want to smoke Marley out.
He’s playing poker with his buddy lawman Brian Foster(Klaus Kinski) when she stumbles into the office. Brian offers to get up a posse, but Marley refuses, saying he’ll do it himself. Brian nods and is left to watch over Marley’s sister-in-law, which he does to the point of killing his own deputy when he finds the man has raped her. His rational is that she’s already been raped, which disgusts Brian.
The plot is a bit murky from this point. A government agent claims to have papers linking Marley to the gun smugglers, his signature on a paper, though his friend, an army Colonel, doesn’t believe it. An arrest warrant is put out though. Marley, visited by the Colonel, is told what a terrible headache he got from the blow and a horse just happens to be tied up in back.
The script was by Renato Savino and directed by Ginacarlo Romitelli. They manage to thrown a few twists in the second half of the film that redeems it from being a total loss. Harrison wears a goofy looking hat that makes him look stupid at certain angles. Hw works better as the stalwart hero when bareheaded. Despite all the posters. Kinski doesn’t have a huge part, though it’s crucial at the end. He is, as always, a delight in the scenes in which he appears. One jarring note I noticed in this spaghetti, more than any other film of his, was the voice used for the dubbing. It didn’t seem to go with him here. Having seen Kinski in a number of English language films, he has a very distinctive voice. The one here was an American accented voice that looked, frankly, stupid, serving as Kinski’s.
The clip below is the theme song sung by Anne Collin. Below that is the trailer, in Italian, but gives you a flavor of the film.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 63,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
It’s Ray Bradbury week on Forgotten Books, hardly a lost author, but onw most certainly worth showcasing. Bradbury was one of my early finds as my reading prowess and hunger grew. I’d started the first grade not knowing how to read and by the end of that first year won a prize for reading the most books, including a girl that was doing second grade work who skipped to the third grade the next year. Each book was noted on a card and handed in to the teacher.
It was a natural for me and after I’d had my fill of The Hardy boys, I moved into more adult fare. Bradbury wasn’t the first. Heinlein gets that distinction. But Bradbury was certainly early. THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES might have been the first. I was heavy into science fiction then and the Word Mars was likely a trigger to GRAB IT.
A PLEASURE TO BURN, subtitle FAHRENHEIT 451 STORIES, collects all the early stories by Bradbury that dealt with themes he was exploring that would eventually end up in the famous novel. Bradbury authorities Donn Albright and Jon Eller edited this volume for the 2010 Subterranean Press edition.
Thirteen tales of book burnings, a gradually more rigid government, and a populace reduced to sheep-like status.
1: THE REINCARNATE
2: PILLAR OF FIRE
3: THE LIBRARY
4: BRIGHT PHOENIX
5: THE MAD WIZARDS OF MARS
6: CARNIVAL OF MADNESS
7: BONFIRE
8: THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH
9: THE PEDESTRIAN
10: THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR
11: THE SMILE
12: LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT
13: THE FIREMAN
Long After Midnight, appearing previously only in an expensive, limited edition, and The Fireman, the immediate precursor to Bradbury’s most famous work, are essentially the same story, early versions as the author worked toward the full novel.
Three extra stories at the end fill out the book, all time travel tales.
I’ve come to look forward to a new book by J. D. Rhoades. A fellow North Carolinian, most of his work is set in the state, the thrillers anyway(he also does a bit of SF and fantasy). BROKEN SHIELD is a sequel to BREAKING COVER, his 2008 thriller. This time, however, Tim Buckthorn, a deputy sheriff of Gibson County, is the main focus, Tony Wolf a supporting character.
It’s Ray Bradbury week on Forgotten Books, hardly a lost author, but onw most certainly worth showcasing. Bradbury was one of my early finds as my reading prowess and hunger grew. I’d started the first grade not knowing how to read and by the end of that first year won a prize for reading the most books, including a girl that was doing second grade work who skipped to the third grade the next year. Each book was noted on a card and handed in to the teacher.
