Today’s Humor: Superhero Edition

Deadpool had no choice actually.

A Cautionary Tale…

I get emails every day from authors wanting me to review their books. They get my name off Amazon’s reviewer list(I’m not that high, in the nineteen hundreds. Mostly I review thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, and westerns. I have occasionally tackled children’s books as well. The inner child in me enjoys them. I’m careful about what I agree to and get them as ebooks or paper.

These books here came today in three packages: seventeen children’s books and two self help. The email I got from the lady offered any or all of them for review. I suggested we start with one from each author first. The children’s books i can read in a few minutes. Hell, the reviews take longer to write and post. I fired off a slightly unpleasant email saying I might just chuck the lot. She wrote back apologetic, blamed it on an overeager assistant, and told me not to feel obligated to do all. “Give them to a children’s hospital.”

I won’t chuck them, a bad thing to do to a book, and I’ll review them all when I can work them in. But I’ll be a bit more careful with authors I don’t know in the future.

May 2014 Book Round-Up

94: SF: Rebels Divided(ebook) – Lance Erlick

95: WE: One Against A Gun Horde(ebook) – Richard Prosch

96: LT: Man From The Sky(ebook) – Danny Wynn

97: WW: Last Chance Canyon(ebook) – James Reasoner

98: AD: G.I. Joe: Fall of Mann(ebook) – Ernie Lindsey

99: TH: Faceoff – edited by David Baldacci

100: CR: Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats(ebook) edited by Chad Eagleton

101: TH: Contrails(ebook) – Robert Anderson & Steve Clark

102: AD: Legacy: Overload(ebook) – Warren Murphy & Gerald Welch

103: MY: The Case of The Violent Virgin(ebook) – Michael Avallone

104: WE: Sundance – David Fuller

105: WE: Mockingbird & Big Earl(ebook) James & Livia Reasoner

106: SF: Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome(ebook) – john Scalzi

107: CR: Wide Spot In The Road(ebook) – Wayne D. Dundee

108: SF: A Time For Dying(ebook) – Jude Hardin

109: HS: The River of Souls – Robert McCammon

110: CR: Jestors and Junkies(ebook) – Jaime Garrett

111: SF: Shadow World(ebook) – Chris Impey

112: TH: Common Place(ebook) – Richard David Bach

113: MY: The Devil In The Marshalsea – Antonia Hodgson

114: SF: Super(ebook) – Ernie Lindsey

115: PA: Where There’s Smoke(ebook) – Jodi Picault

116: WE: Sing A Song of Six Guns – Burt Arthur

117: FA: Cursed Children of Naor(ebook) – Justyna Plichta-Jendzio

118: TH: The Mingrelian – Ed Baldwin

119: FA: The Man Who Would Kill Death(ebook) – Geltab

120: HR: I Am Eternal(ebook) – Anthanasios

121: SF: Bad Medicine(ebook) – Robert Sheckley

122: CR: A Dead Issue – John Evans

123: WE: Waiting For A Comet(ebook) – Richard Prosch

124: WE: Caprock Rebel – Will C. Brown

125: SF: A Gazillion Little Bits(ebook) – Claudia Brevis

126: SF: 1001 Lightyears Entertainments(ebook) -David Loeff

May 2014 Movie Round-Up

Sparrows(1926)

Hide-Out(1934)

The Deadly Mantis(1957)

Reptilicus(1961)

Last of The Badmen(1967)

.32 Caliber Killer(1967)

Night of The Serpent(1969)

The Stranger’s Gundown(1969)

The Stranger’s Gundown(Django Il Bastardo)1969

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Anthony Steffen, spaghetti western

THE STRANGERS GUNDOWN(the U.S. DVD title) had an odd feel to it. Extremely violent like most spaghetti westerns, it could classified almost as horror as well. Almost a weird western. More on that later.

Django is a man on a revenge bender. We don’t learn the exact reason until two thirds of the way through the film. All we get from a brief early flashback is that it goes back to the Civil War. He shows up in a small town called Desert City looking for three men. He announces his intentions each time with a cross planted in the street with the name of a victim and the day’s date on it.

The fyrst two are disposed of quickly, which sets the stage for the protracted tormenting of the final target: Rod Murdok(Paolo Gazlino), the richest man in town. Murdok has a kid brother, Luc(Luciano Rossi, billed as Lu Kamante), a pasty faced kid that’s more than a little crazy. Given to maniacal rages, big brother paid for Althea(Rada Rassimov) to marry him and look after the boy, no easy task.

Rod Murdok has surrounded himself with a host of gunmen to protect the family and him. Little good it does.

All through the film, one is never sure if Django is alive. A ghost maybe. He seems to always be at the right place. One second he’s shown hiding in town, the next miles away to take down three of Murdok’s gunmen. At times, he’ll be right in with them, part of the gang hunting him. One instant, the ramrod yells spread out and find him, only to see him standing there when they scatter. He’ll suddenly be upstairs when the floor below is full of gunmen. Always in the right spot, almost invisible.

Murdok had all the decent folks run out of town for a few days, clearing the way for them to kill him as soon as they found him.

One of the best spaghetti westerns I’ve seen in a while.

The clip below is the kill count Django racks up during the film. It uses one of the U.S. titles, DJANGO THE BASTARD. Another U.S. title was DJANGO THE AVENGER.

FFB: Caprock Rebel – Will C. Brown

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Forgotten Books, Will C. Brown

I’ve Written of Will C. Brown’s work in the past, HERE and HERE. I enjoy his books more every time I read a new one.

Two men are after a fortune in gold. Dave Landis had hooked up with a man named Concher. Both men had fought for the South during the war and both hated, still, the Union soldiers. Concher was on the run for killing one.

The pair were headed for Caprock territory in the Texas panhandle. It was gold they were after.

The legend was that a party of settlers, the Fridales, were ambushed and slaughtered by Comanche, the Indians burying ten thousand in gold coin. Concher claims to have seen them bury it with two comrades who then had a running battle with them, only Concher surviving to escape. Landis was along because he grew up in the area on a ranch his father had built.

That had happened before the war for both men and neither had been back since. Prison time for Concher and a rancher named Cal Mayhaw that had driven Landis’s father out of business, Landis having worked for him for a time until he could no longer stomach the deals with Comancheroes, the stolen cattle.

The plan was to get in and out with the gold.

But a young woman now lived in his old homestead, Mayhaw gets wind of Landis back in the area, and Union troops are closing in on both them and Mayhaw.

A lot going on in this novel, but deftly handled.

Top Ten Western Movie Gunfights

The Flash

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The CW, The Flash

Today’s Humor

The Homesman

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Glendon Swarthout, Hillary Swank, Tommy Lee Jones

Coming in the fall is this new western starring Tommy Lee Jones and Hillary Swank. Based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, better known for the source material of the Duke’s last movie, THE SHOOTIST.