Private eye Captain Duncan Maclain, so known for his military service in WWI, where he was also blinded, is investigating the murder of an actor named Paul Gerente, the ex-husband of Mrs. Thaddeus Tredwell, the fourth Mrs. Tredwell. The mister’s daughter Babs had secretly been seeing him and she was now missing.
Maclain and his partner, Spud Savage, have a number of suspects. And even a man who lived one floor above the victim has confessed to the killing, claiming self-defense, and that one of the Tredwell maids can back his story, being a witness. She’ll claim she wasn’t there though.
And the daughter Babs has gone missing besides.
It doesn’t take the blind man long, all his other senses sharpened from years of training, to figure the man’s story doesn’t hold up. The killing couldn’t have happened the way he said.
Why did the man confess to a killing he couldn’t have committed? And why involve an innocent girl?
Maclain moves into the Tredwell household with his two German Shepherds, Schnucke, his seeing eye animal, and Dreist, who serves more as a bodyguard to look into the matter.
Tredwell’s son is an engineer working for the federal government out of a shop on the home property and has designed a bomb sight for the air service(the time is 1940-41 and America hasn’t entered the war yet). He’s working on an improved model and that may have something to do with all the goings on.
And then the second body turns up. Maclain, going to talk with another maid, finds her dead, beheaded!
An unusual P.I. novel involving a spy angle. It was made in the 1942 film EYES IN THE NIGHT.
SEA NO EVIL is the latest entry in James Mullaney’s humorous fantasy/noir series. Crag Banyon is a private investigator who had clients from Santa Claus to the Greek God Poseidon in this one. He has an elf partner/assistant named Mannix and a secretary Doris Starburton. To give you an idea how this fun series goes, Banyon stops in one afternoon at his favorite bar and mentions, in P.I. first person of course, it’s even deader than normal. the only customers are a vampire, a zombie, and one of those stitched together corpses that mad scientists are always putting together, then releasing it on the public.
Here, Poseidon and his new wife call Banyon in because he’s been receiving threats to his life. They meet on the outdoors deck of a sea food restaurant over the waters of the bay. You see, a hundred years before old Poseidon had been accused of putting an iceberg in the path of the Titanic. To appease the leprechaun mob, he had to wear an ankle monitor for a hundred years, confining him to water or over water. To come on land would mean his death. It would be coming off in a week.
The ever observant P.I. had noticed a little guy taking more than a casual interest in them from a distance and wearing a parka and a grass skirt. He charges at the little man, only to learn something the Poseidons had forgot to mention. His trident, used to control water, was missing.
Guess who had it!
Banyon was determined not to take their case after nearly drowning for that little omission. Unfortunately, the little man kept trying to kill Banyon and he was forced to take the case to figure out what was going on. Oh, and of course, to stay alive.
I love this series. Mullaney sprinkles pop culture references throughout the story that can’t help but bring a smile to one.
Recommended. Check it out HERE, not to mention the other books in the series. You will be entertained. I promise you.
Howard Hawks directed this 1932 racing film. The director had had an obsession with racing since his early years and that knowledge lent the film an authentic air. That a number of real life “racing drivers” were involved in the production helped as well. The Dusenberg brothers helped in the staging of the racing crash scenes.
James Cagney is Joe Greer, top notch driver and the most recent winner of the Indianapolis 500. He’s come home, the first time in four years, for an exhibition race at the local dirt track. Along with him is his best friend Spud Connors(Frank McHugh) who’s met by his wife and son. “Pop” Greer(Guy Kibbee), Joe’s father, is there at the train station with Joe’s kid brother Eddie(Eric Linden), grown up now and with aspirations to be a racing driver. He’s built his own car, with Pop’s help, at the family garage, and is the local star at the dirt track. He’s entered in the exhibition race also.
Joe’s girl friend Lee Merrick(Ann Dvorak) is along, but Joe soft pedals their relationship in front of Eddie, much to Lee’s consternation because she loves him and hates playing second fiddle to his racing career. She rooms, it’s never said exactly where, with Anne Scott(Joan Blondell) who has a disdain for men in general and seems, early on anyway, to be a party girl. She hates that Lee sits in the apartment when Joe is away on a race waiting on him to come home.
When Joe’s impressed by Eddie’s driving in the exhibition race and offers him a “real” car, things change. He comes home to find Eddie there, come looking for him, having a drink with Lee and Anne, he goes ballistic. Polite enough until he gets Eddie out, he then hustles Anne out the door a bit later, then laces into Anne, telling her they’re through, that’s he’s taking Eddie with him on the racing circuit.
Crushed by that, Anne is in tears when Anne returns and the pair concoct a plan to show Joe what it’s like to lose someone he loves. Anne will use her wiles, and they are considerable, to win Eddie’s heart. it works too well. For both of them. Anne falls in love, they both do, and it’s the beginning of the end. Joe tries to break them apart, is rebuffed, and throws Eddie off his team. “You’re on your own!” He rages.
Eddie brings his old car for the next race, Joe’s buddy Spud catches him drinking before the start, and sees trouble coming. Sure enough, when Eddie out maneuvers at one spot, he’s enraged and tries to get back at him. Spud puts his car between them and tries to hold off Joe, blocking him all around the track. Joe keeps pushing, bumping Spud, until his friend crashes, the car set fire, Spud burning to death. This sequence was a bit unbelievable for me. We see no one rushing to put the fire out, the race continues, burning fuel across the track, the driver’s running through it every lap. One driver finally pulls off, saying the smell of burning flesh was too much.
Joe, finally realizing what he’s done, spins out.
In the months that follow, Joe’s career takes a nose dive, torn by the scene of his friend burning, while Eddie’s rise. No one knows where Joe is most of the time. He rarely finishes high in a race. Lee is worried, Eddie doesn’t care, happy with Anne.
As the next Indy 500 approaches, Lee borrows money from Anne for the fare to Indianapolis. She wants to find Joe and help him, knowing he’ll be there for the race. She gets a job at a restaurant. Joe, we see, is a broken man, both in spirit and resources, riding the rails to get there, picking up dropped fruit from a box car being unloaded. He visits the track, looking for a ride, any kind of job to be around racing. here’s where we see a lot of real life drivers of the time, each with a line or two, turning him down for a job. One says to another that he couldn’t offer him a job in the pits. Not a driver once as great as him.
All ends well when Eddie is injured by flying debris from another wreck. he has a two lap lead at the time and unless he can get a relief driver, he will be disqualified. Guess who the relief driver turns out to be? It’s a two man job in each car, a driver and a mechanic(not sure what a mechanic can do in the middle of a race though) and Eddie takes that position as we get the exciting finish where Joe has to chase down the lead driver and pass him at the end, with a tire shredding all the while.
One bit of trivia. THE CROWD ROARS was remade in 1939 as INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY with Pat O’Brien in the Cagney role and Ann Sheridan in the Blondell role. Unfortunately, Frank McHugh got to burn again, playing the same character in the remake.
For more overlooked movies and related matters, as always on Tuesdays, drop in on Todd Mason over at SWEET FREEDOM.
1: Star Trek: Into Darkness – Alan Dean Foster: the tie-in novel for the new movie. Foster is a long time favorite whther his tie-in work or his original stuff.
2: Dead Men’s Dust – Matt Hilton: the first novel in the Joe Hunter series.
3: Eye For An Eye(ARC) – Ben Coes: the latest Dewey Andreas thriller.
4: Fool Me Twice – Michael Brandman: the latest in the continuation of Robert Parker’s Jesse Stone series.
and the ebooks:
5: Sea No Evil – James Mullaney: the latest in the Crag Banyon humorous noir/fantasy series.
6: Pros & Cons – Janet Evanovitch & Lee Goldberg: a short story prequel to their forthcoming novel.
What we have here is a collection of stories rooted in the pulp world of the thirties and forties. The creators, Scott P. Vaughn(art) and Kane Gilmour(words), in separate introductions, talk about the various influences that came together in this work. WARBIRDS OF MARS is a webzine with newspaper style strips telling the stories. Two books have gathered the early strips into comic book style collections. They even do radio style broadcasts of stories.
Love of all things 1940s, the pulps, superhero comics of the eighties/nineties.
The set-up is Martians invaded Earth in 1944 bringing a halt to WWII. In the strip, it’s 1948 and the world has coalesced into new alliances. Germany and Japan went with the invaders, most of the rest of the world against them.
In the States, New York and everything northeast is a free state, as is California. The Midwest is controlled by the invaders and Germany, the Southwest a constant battleground. Florida is known these days as the “Glowing Keys,” which should tell you what happened.
The main resistance players are known as the Martian Killers:
Hunter Noir, bandaged head, eyes only visible, fedora, trenchcoat, and two pistols, a Mauser and a Colt .45, is the leader
Jack “Bomber” Paris, pilot and former captain of the Wild Hare bomber squadron in the war.
Josie Taylor, lounge singer and girl friend of Paris, she’s a pilot in training and expert with weapons.
Mr. Mask, the result of genetic cross-breeding, half Martian, half human. He wears a gas mask and carries a samurai sword made by himself, and trained in the arts by the blind sensei, Ojiisama, giving a sense of worth and a name.
The team operates out of a base under Coney Island and go all across the country wherever they’re needed.
The way this collection came about is similar to others. Other writers and artists stood on the borders watching this new playground and wanting to get in to have their own fun. Thankfully the two men allowed it and we get this first volume.
Ready for more. Available both in paper and as an ebook HERE.
Actor Tomas Milian was one of the giants in the spaghetti western genre. Born in Cuba in 1932, he was the son of an army general arrested in a dictatorship overthrown in 1933. The father committed suicide in 1945 which the boy Tomas saw happen. Trained at the Actors Studio, he’d appeared on Broadway in several plays and was spotted by Italian director Mauro Bolognini which led to a long career in Italian cinema. THE BOUNTY KILLER(also released in the U.S. as The Ugly Ones) was his first western. It had a better plot than a lot of spaghettis, probably because it was based on a novel by Marvin H. Albert, a fine writer in a number of different genres.
As a long time fan of spaghetti westerns, and having seen more than a few starring Milian, I saw the beginnings of the character he forged in most of his movies(after the fade of Eurowesterns, he carried it on to other types of films). A barely controlled psychopath, calm one minute, a laughing hyena the next. Violent and nice at the same time. Charismatic to most people he encountered.
The film opens with two men being pursued by a third. That man is bounty hunter Luke Chilson(Richard Wyler). He kills one, the other getting away. That man goes to the small town of New Chacos to find a young woman named Eden(Halina Zawlewska, billed as Ilya Karin), to tell her that Jose Gomez(Milian) needs help. He’s being transferred to a Federal prison and will stop at a way station the next day for the noon meal.
Chilson shows up and claims the life of the outlaw when he won’t surrender, taking him for the reward.
They call New Chacos a village. But we only see a few buildings: a blacksmith shop run by Miquel(veteran spaghetti actor Mario Brega), a saloon with rooms upstairs run by a man named Novak(Enzo Fiermonte, billed as Glen Foster) where Eden works, a general store run by an older couple(no credits on IMDb), and a young cowboy, Marty Hefner(Manuel Zarzo). Jose grew up there when his family came north from Mexico for a new life. The parents ended up being murdered and the town folk remembered the quiet young man who killed a soldier in self-defense, but went to prison anyway.
At the stage station the next day when the transport ferrying Jose stops, there just happens to be a young woman having lunch. Eden of course. Five guards with him, they come in to eat, Jose sitting at the table where Eden, during a distraction she arranges, slips him a gun, then leaves. The next distraction is a couple of men riding up, warned off by the deputy in charge, just enough for Jose to kill the pair left inside with him while the pair of men charge in guns blazing. No one is left alive, the five guards, the two innocents running the stage stop, and we begin to get the idea of the sort of man Jose has become.
Chilson gets word of the escape and that Jose was aided by a mid-twenties blonde with blue eyes. It gives him thought and when he hears of the reward, three thousand, he heads back to New Chacos, arriving ahead of Jose and his band of outlaws. The townspeople are not receptive to him. The bar owner Novak has been recognized by Chilson as a respected ex-lawman who’s renounced violence. The blacksmith is a childhood friend of Jose. The elderly couple remember the quiet boy and the cowboy Marty doesn’t like the way the bounty “killer” is questioning Eden. They all conspire to knock Chilson unconscious, tie him up, and wait for Jose to arrive.
A move they soon come to regret as Jose barely restrains his men from killing Chilson, promising they can have him when they are ready to leave. he grows increasingly erratic as the drink to excess while waiting for a wagon load of goods to arrive< The plan is to empty the general store and take all to Mexico to sell. Jose laughingly promises to send the old couple the proceeds from the sale.
Chilson has been strung up and taunted with gunshots all around, a knife barely missing him, kerosene from a lantern dripping onto him from a punctured lantern hanging over his head, all the while Jose lies on a bed pulled outside, drinking and laughing insanely.
It's Eden that cuts him loose during the night and he's seen riding off the next morning, setting the whole pack of outlaws after him. It was amusing to the the old wife of the general store owner outraged that he would ride off and leave them at the mercy of those cutthroats. Novak points out that they were responsible for being under the thumb of the outlaws.
Not to fear. Chilson is not about to let a bounty that size go easily. He’s merely setting up for the final showdown with Jose and his outlaws, aided bu Novak and Eden. A nicely choreographed explosion of violence.
The reviews on IMDb were all over the place for this one. From badly acted, badly filmed, never should have made it to film to slow at the beginning with a great ending to an overlooked classic. I enjoyed it. It was neither the best spaghetti western I’ve seen or the worst.
