Friday, November 29, 2013

FFB: WILD RIDERS by Lee Hoffman (Signet, 1969)

Shirley "Lee" Hoffman first made a public name for herself as one of the wittier and more multiply-engaged (with other aspects of the world) science-fiction fans who published fanzines in the early 1950s, those whose interests strayed from exclusive attention to the fiction (and related matter) to various subjects including the self-conscious fannish community itself...her magazines Quandry and Science Fiction Five-Yearly, particularly the former, were among the first "faanzines" (as one's interests drifted further away from fantastic fiction, one added more As to the variations on faannish activity...out of such ferment, the first comics, rock/punk, and some other sorts of fanzines were born, not least Hoffman's own folk-music fanzines Caravan and then Gardyloo, in the latter 1950s). Leading up to and during her marriage to editor Larry Shaw, she served as assistant editor of Infinity Science Fiction and its stablemate, Science Fiction Adventures. But when she began writing professionally in the latter '60s, the field she found herself contributing to most plentifully (along with writing some fantasy, sf and [under a pseudonym] romance fiction) was the field of westerns. Her fourth published western novel, The Valdez Horses, won the Western Writers of America Golden Spur for best novel of 1967, and was filmed in Spain under direction of John Sturges (and released under several titles, including the novel's and Chino). Today's book is her eighth western novel, Wild Riders, which, while good, is still the weakest of the Hoffman
Lee Hoffman & fellow writer Wilson Tucker, 1950s
westerns I've read and shows some haste in composition that says to me she didn't get a chance to write the next draft she meant to...at least one phrase is repeated verbatim, in describing the relation of two brothers, about twenty pages apart, and Thog comes to mind a bit in the early sentence: 


"Brade," she said slowly.

Even given that Hoffman is writing of Missourians and is herself from the deep South, there are only so many ways one syllable can be slowed down, as opposed to spoken with apparent hesitation or reluctance. Brade is our protagonist, a former "bushwhacker" in Missouri and more bloodily in Kansas during the Civil War, one of Quantrill's Raiders, who finds himself chafing at the restrictions he and other Secesh veterans and sympathizers are facing in the postwar, somewhat carpetbagged state. Not long after returning to his small farm, only to find the buildings torched and a noose left hanging in further threat from a tree in the yard, Caudell Bradenton finds himself joining up with a small unit of fellow former Confederates to rob banks in hopes of funding some bribery and campaigns to dislodge the anti-Rebel politicians in the state legislature and at least one of their US Senate seats, and more to the point lift the restrictions on anyone who held any Southern sentiments in the past war. He also discovers that his neighbors' daughter, formerly a child he'd watched out for some in his young adulthood, being nearly twenty years older than she, is approaching legal majority and has her mind set on settling with him. And thus begin his problems, and what turns out to be not only a hardboiled western, somewhat moreso than most of Hoffman's, but also an actual mystery in structure, with questions of purpose and identity held till the closing pages. Also, a formal duel in a western context that might remind one of The Big Country, only with less convenient breakdown of Good Man vs. Bad Man; odd how much of the novel reminded me of, of all things, Ron Scheer's choice of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for his book this week...some subset of what's dealt with in that landmark is echoed here...though not as profoundly, disappointingly light on the resonance for a Hoffman novel. Though she does slip in no little of her knowledge of the folk music of that era, and even more authentic-reading passages on firearms (and I wonder if the character in the novel named Goforth is a "Tuckerization" of infrequent writer Laura Goforth)...her attention to equine detail also seems more than solid, as Hoffman had famously withdrawn from active fannish/faanish activity in the sf community, at least for a while, by "walking around a horse" and growing very thoroughly involved in equestrian matters (later, she would briefly be on the edge of professionalism in auto racing at about the same time, though not the same place, my parents were, in the early '60s).

Lee Hoffman, 1988
All told, I'd begin with Hoffman's westerns with The Valdez Horses or Trouble Valley or her last western novel, The Land Killer (1978), but you'll have a good time with this one, as well, even if even the shape of it calls out for another draft (the conclusion is simply way too rushed, once arrived at in this slim novel). But, then again, the same was true of Finn...

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.







Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V on Wednesday: the links

Moscow-Cassiopeia
This week's selections for (usually) unfairly overlooked or obscure audio/visual presentations at the links below...and the probability of a few more to be added over the course of the day. As always, thanks to all you who read as well as those who contribute these...and if I've overlooked your or someone else's review or citation, please let me know in comments...

Bill Crider: My Favorite Brunette [excerpt--though the entire film is linked to in the review post]

Brian Arnold: The Mouse on the Mayflower

BV Lawson: Media Murder

David Vineyard: The Poppy is Also a Flower (aka The Opium Connection aka Operation Opium)

Elizabeth Foxwell: Satan Met a Lady; Noel Coward stage production photos; The Vault: "Ngaio Marsh"

About Time
Evan Lewis: Ellery Queen: Master Detective

George Kelley: About Time

Iba Dawson: The Mirror

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Little Rascals/Our Gang: Die Kleinen Stroiche 1927-29; Hal Roach [Studios]: Female Comedy Teams

J. Kingston Pierce: Bullet Points

Jacqueline T. Lynch: 21 November 1963 at the movies...

James Reasoner: Flypaper (2011 film)

Jerry House: Thanksgiving with George Burns and Gracie Allen...and Charlie Chaplin

They Call Her...Cleopatra Wong
John Charles: One-Armed Executioner; They Call Her...Cleopatra Wong

Juri Nummelin: Moscow-Cassiopeia (1974 USSR sf film)

Kate Laity: The Light Princess; Fashion Beast

Laura: The Affairs of Cellini; The Silver Whip

Lucy Brown: Flower Drum Song

Martin Edwards: Agatha Christie's Poirot: "Dead Man's Folly"

Marty McKee: Shotgun Wedding

Mystery Dave: Cockneys vs. Zombies

Patti Abbott: Masterpiece Theatre: "The First Churchills"

Pearce Duncan: Dead End (2003 film)

Prashant Trikannad: the 10 animated films with the best voices

Randy Johnson: The Tall Target; La caza del oro (aka Too Much Gold for One Gringo aka They Believed He was No Saint) 

Rick: She (1965 film); gift ideas

Rod Lott: Death Force; Goldengirl; The Uninvited
Ride Lonesome

Ron Scheer: Ride Lonesome

Sergio Angelini: The Drowning Pool

Stacia Jones: I Married a Monster from Outer Space; The Carpetbaggers; The Assassination Bureau

Stephen Bowie: Peyton Place

Stephen Gallagher: The 2013 European Science TV and New Media Festival

Yvette Banek: Hatari!

The Light Princess

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V delayed till this evening...sorry about that.

Things are still, if not crazy, then unhelpful. But I will be putting up links by tonight...thanks for your kindness and patience...

Friday, November 22, 2013

FFB: HORRORSTORY: VOLUME 3: edited by Gerald W. Page and Karl Edward Wagner (1992 hardcover omnibus reprint of THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES, Series VII-IX, 1979-81)

It would be difficult for me not to be at least slightly nostalgic about the contents of this volume, or of the three volumes of the paperback annual it collects in small-press hardcover format (big, galumphing small-press hardcover, with large pages and plenty of them).

Here's the contents swipe from the Locus online indices: 

HorrorStory Volume Three ed. Karl Edward Wagner [Gerald Page's name left off cover for obscure reasons--TM]
 (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-107-6, Jan ’92, $39.95, 541pp, hc, cover by Michael Whelan)

Omnibus of three “year’s best” anthologies, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: VII (DAW 1979) edited by Gerald W. Page, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: VIII (DAW 1980), and The Year’s Best Horror Stories: IX (DAW 1981) edited by Karl Edward Wagner. A signed edition (-108-4, $150.00) is scheduled to appear in March. Available from Underwood-Miller, 7708 Westover Dr., Lancaster PA 17601.
  • · The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series VII · ed. Gerald W. Page · an New York: DAW Jul ’79
  • 1 · Introduction · Gerald W. Page · in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII, ed. Gerald W. Page, DAW, 1979
  • 3 · The Pitch · Dennis Etchison · ss Whispers Oct ’78
  • 11 · The Night of the Tiger · Stephen King · ss F&SF Feb ’78
  • 23 · Amma · Charles R. Saunders · ss Beyond the Fields We Know Fll ’78
  • 39 · Chastel [Lee CobbettJudge Keith Hilary Pursuivant] · Manly Wade Wellman · nv The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII, ed. Gerald W. Page, DAW, 1979
  • 59 · Sleeping Tiger · Tanith Lee · ss Dragonbane Spr ’78
  • 67 · Intimately, with Rain · Janet Fox · ss Collage Nov ’78
  • 73 · The Secret · Jack Vance · ss Impulse Mar ’66
  • 81 · Hear Me Now, My Sweet Abbey Rose · Charles L. Grant · ss F&SF Mar ’78
  • 95 · Divers Hands [Julian] · Darrell Schweitzer · nv The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII, ed. Gerald W. Page, DAW, 1979
  • 117 · Heading Home · Ramsey Campbell · ss Whispers Oct ’78
  • 121 · In the Arcade · Lisa Tuttle · ss Amazing May ’78
  • 129 · Nemesis Place [Dama (& Vettius)] · David Drake · ss Fantastic Apr ’78
  • 141 · Collaborating · Michael Bishop · ss Rooms of Paradise, ed. Lee Harding, South Yarra, Victoria, Australia: Quartet Books, 1978
  • 157 · Marriage · Robert Aickman · nv Tales of Love and Death, Gollancz, 1977; F&SF Apr ’78

  • 183 · The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series VIII · an New York: DAW Jul ’80
  • 185 · Introduction: Access to Horror · Karl Edward Wagner · in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VIII, ed. Karl Edward Wagner, DAW, 1980
  • 189 · The Dead Line · Dennis Etchison · ss Whispers Oct ’79
  • 199 · To Wake the Dead · Ramsey Campbell · ss Dark Horizons #20 ’79
  • 209 · In the Fourth Year of the War · Harlan Ellison · ss Midnight Sun #5 ’79
  • 219 · From the Lower Deep · Hugh B. Cave · ss Whispers II, ed. Stuart David Schiff, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979
  • 231 · The Baby-Sitter · Davis Grubb · ss The Siege of 318, Back Fork Books, 1978
  • 245 · The Well at the Half-Cat · John Tibbetts · ss Eldritch Tales #5 ’79
  • 263 · My Beautiful Darkling · Eddy C. Bertin · ss Mijn Mooie Duisterlinge, 1979
  • 277 · A Serious Call · George Hay · ss Ghosts & Scholars #1 ’79
  • 283 · Sheets · Alan Ryan · ss Chrysalis 5, ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra, 1979
  • 293 · Billy Wolfe’s Riding Spirit · Kevin A. Lyons · ss Easyriders Sep ’79
  • 299 · Lex Talionis · Russell Kirk · nv Whispers II, ed. Stuart David Schiff, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979
  • 317 · Entombed · Robert Keefe · ss Gothic Jun ’79
  • 327 · A Fly One · Steve Sneyd · ss Whispers Oct ’79
  • 333 · Needle Song · Charles L. Grant · ss Midnight Sun #5 ’79
  • 343 · All the Birds Come Home to Roost · Harlan Ellison · ss Playboy Mar ’79
  • 355 · The Devil Behind You · Richard A. Moore · ss EQMM May ’79

  • 363 · The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series IX · an New York: DAW Aug ’81
  • 365 · Introduction: The Year of the Anthology and Beyond · Karl Edward Wagner · in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IX, ed. Karl Edward Wagner, DAW, 1981
  • 369 · The Monkey · Stephen King · nv Gallery Nov ’80
  • 401 · The Gap · Ramsey Campbell · ss Fantasy Readers Guide #2 ’80
  • 411 · The Cats of Pere LaChaise [“I’ll Tell Her You’ll Be Late for Dinner”] · Neil Olonoff · ss A Touch of Paris Jun ’80
  • 419 · The Propert Bequest · Basil A. Smith · nv The Scallion Stone, Whispers Press, 1980
  • 457 · On Call · Dennis Etchison · ss Fantasy Newsletter Mar ’80
  • 465 · The Catacomb · Peter Shilston · ss More Ghosts & Scholars, 1980
  • 475 · Black Man with a Horn · T. E. D. Klein · nv New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham, 1980
  • 509 · The King · William Relling, Jr. · ss Cavalier Feb ’80
  • 517 · Footsteps · Harlan Ellison · ss Gallery Dec ’80
  • 529 · Without Rhyme or Reason · Peter Valentine Timlett · ss New Terrors #1, ed. Ramsey Campbell, London: Pan, 1980
Gerald W. Page has edited a handful of anthologies, most in the 1970s, all impressive; one could've hoped he'd been able to do more. He was the first US-based editor for DAW Books's The Year's Best Horror Stories, after three volumes taken haphazardly from two distinct projects edited by Richard Davis for English publishers; Page assembled the fourth through the seventh volumes, and Wagner began with the 8th and continued till the 22nd, and the series ended with Wagner's death (the hole thus created in the market soon not so much filled as meliorated by the fine new annuals from Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and from Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, with Campbell dropping out after the early volumes, and Datlow, much later, going solo with her annual collection...with Datlow and Jones eventually joined by Datlow's former assistant editor Paula Guran, first with a paranormal romance annual and then with one mixing a wider range of "dark" fantasy and horror). 

Look at the contents of these three volumes, above, and imagine the collective effect on the young horror-fiction reader and aspiring writer/editor I then was...even when I didn't much like a story, as I didn't much like Stephen King's "The Night of the Tiger," the setting of this weak story between the brilliant "The Pitch" by Dennis Etchison and the solid "Amma" by Charles Saunders helps to give context, as well as an excuse to have King's name on the cover...at least this story was better than the Terry Carr and Arthur Saha fantasy annuals' snatching up such even worse stories as "The Cat from Hell" and "The Gunslinger" at about the same time (Page had a sharper eye, for the rather decent likes of "Children of the Corn" in the previous volume).  Meanwhile, one notes that Page, even more than Wagner, seems to be genuinely digging deep into the periodicals to find his contents, still a necessary thing as the small press in horror and related material was just beginning to burgeon, an efflorescence that Page (previously also the editor of the small newsstand magazine Witchcraft and Sorcery) and Wagner (as one of the most popular of writers for small-press magazines as well as an editor) did much to encourage. Page "cheats" thrice in his volume, in including first-publication stories by Manly Wade Wellman and  Darrell Schweitzer, something not too uncommon particularly in DAW "best of the year"s, and in snatching up the rather older than the previous year's fine "The Secret" by Jack Vance.  For his part, Wagner's first two volumes are similarly impressive, if all "stag" among the contributors...something that Wagner would address, though perhaps not quite sufficiently, as his annual went forward (KEW was intentionally more scrupulous about not publishing original fiction in his BOTY reprint annual). A few surprising contributors (if not That surprising...I just hadn't recalled where I first read Richard Moore's fiction) are added to the panoply of young and old masters in both editors' volumes...and both had the slightest sort of connection outside of my appreciation for their work here...Wagner was kind enough to praise my first short story (sadly, not long before his death), and Page (like myself only some years earlier) working at TV Guide (where, oddly enough, even if only in the Atlanta and neighboring regional editions, Page's writing was probably read by more people than all the YBHS contributors to his volumes could muster together in those years.

The Page book is also special to me in that it draws on 1978 magazine and anthology publications, the first year I was seriously collecting fiction magazines and all the related material they turned me onto, and I was thrilled to see fiction from issues I had read, and from those I'd missed so far...odd, to me, that Underwood and Miller should take, for their omnibus's cover, the weakest of the three DAW covers...this, btw, was Volume Three apparently because U/M hoped to produce hardcover reprints of the entire YBHS sequence, and the Davis and Page volumes would've populated Volumes 1 and 2, Later On...even as this "third" volume was produced after V. 4 and 5...

For more of today's books, all more prompt, please see Patti Abbott's blog.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

Ann Blyth and Glenn Strange
This week's selections for (usually) unfairly overlooked or obscure audio/visual presentations, including stage drama (and puppetry), museum shows and small conventions, at the links below...and the probability of a few more to be added over the course of the day. As always, thanks to all you who read as well as those who contribute these...and if I've overlooked your or someone else's review or citation, please let me know in comments...my own long-promised bit on mermaid drama seems to be just swimmingly  elusive, or at least the time to it remotely correctly...

Anonymous: Clothes Make the Man?

Bill Crider: Rider on the Rain [trailer]

Brian Arnold: 29th Street

B. V. Lawson: Media Murder

Dan Stumpf: The Girl Hunters

David Vineyard: Gambling Ship (adapting Fast One by Paul Cain)

Elizabeth Foxwell: Terror Street; Gideon's Day (aka Gideon of Scotland Yard)

Evan Lewis: Mattel Shootin' Shell toy pistols and their tv ads

George Kelley: Warhorse (2013 stage/puppetry)

How Did This Get Made?: Fair Game

Iba Dawson: Kendra Bean on Vivian Leigh

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Accidentally Preserved 2; The Ace of Hearts; Radio Rides the Range

J. Kingston Pierce: Sherlock Holmes (1954 television); the new Murder, She Wrote

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "The Man with Two Faces" by Henry Slesar

Jackie Kashian: Dana Gould, Matt Weinhold and Shawn Sheridan on monsters in the dramatic arts

Jacqueline T. Lynch: -30-

Jake Hinkson: Colorado Territory; Noir at the Bar

James Reasoner: The Brave One

Jerry House: Fear in the Night

John Charles: The Exterminator; Vigilante

Juri Nummelin: Baron Prásil (aka The Fabulous Baron Munchhausen)

Kate Laity: "Volcano Saga"; The Juniper Tree

Kliph Nesteroff: Pat Carroll

Laura: Les demoiselles de Rochefort (aka The Young Girls of Rochefort); The Falcon's Alibi

Lucy Brown: Penguin Pool Murder

Martin Edwards: The Escape Artist and Agatha Christie's Poirot: "Curtain"

Marty McKee: Chatterbox; Macabre; Room 222

Mystery Dave: White Zombie; Hellboy: Blood and Iron

Niall O'Conghaile: Charlotte Church on music-industry misogyny
Charlotte Church


Patti Abbott: Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Paul Gallagher: The Goon Show

Pearce Duncan: Sugar Hill

Prashant Trikannad: Bud Spencer and Terence Hill

Randy Johnson: Blonde Inspiration; Django Kills Silently (aka Bill il taciturno)

RGJ/Television Obscurities: Miss Susan

Rick: Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation; The Night of the Grizzly; The Birds and the Bees

Rod Lott: Spies Against the World (aka Spie contra il mondo); Nurse Sherri

Ron Scheer: Rio Lobo

Sergio Angelini: Blind Date; We Need to Talk About Kevin

Stacia Jones: The White Dawn; Sidekicks; Nichols

Stephen Bowie: Gail Kobe

Stephen Gallagher: Doctor Who: The Science Behind the Scenes

Walter Albert: The Wrong Box

Yvette Banek: Daddy Long-Legs

Friday, November 15, 2013

FFB: nonfiction about horror fiction and drama: FACES OF FEAR: Interviews by Douglas Winter; DARK DREAMERS: Interviews by Stanley Wiater; CUT! HORROR WRITERS ON HORROR FILM, edited by Christopher Golden

Three volumes published during the US "horror boom" of the 1980s and earliest '90s...two rather heavily overlapping sets of interviews with writers of horror prose (and, for the most part, also horror drama) that both manage to include one (1) woman writer each (and both the women not so much "insiders" in the horror community as most of the men are), and a collection of essays and such by horror prose (and drama) folks about the films they like, love and loathe. 

Berkley Books got into the business of publishing interview/profile collections of writers no later than 1980, with the first volume of Charles Platt's Dream Makers, interview-essays with a variety of sf writers (Platt also had a profound lack of women writers in both Volume 1 and to a lesser extent in V. 2, for, he claimed, women wrote fantasy rather than sf on balance...but, as far as Douglas Winter and Stanley Wiater were concerned, they weren't notably producing too much horror among the fantasy fiction, either).  So, they were ready, by 1985, for Douglas Winter's Faces of Fear, a rather similar collection of interview-based profiles of horrorists that even followed the model of attempting to interview each writer in his (usually) domicile, and making a cross-country trip to do so (thus grouping the interviews roughly geographically). (Over a decade later, Berkley would also take Ed Gorman and M. H. Greenberg's rather similar collections of interviews with crime-fiction writers...Stephen King is the only subject/writer in all of the cited projects so far, and in Wiater's similar volume). Winter's approach isn't too different from Platt's in tone, as well...mostly collegial, at times a bit challenging (if less aggressively so than Platt could be), and despite omitting such candidates as Joan Aiken, Joanna Russ, Janet Fox, Octavia Butler, Lisa Tuttle, Patricia Highsmith, Margaret St. Clair or, among the men, Fritz Leiber and Manly Wade Wellman (also missing from the Wiater) does manage to get an interestingly wide set of participants, from such relatively important but still fringes-of-horror figures as William Peter Blatty and David Morrell and, in the one interview conducted with a woman, takes a relatively rare session with the now late Virginia/V. C. Andrews (an interview that Megan Abbott and Sara Gran would draw upon for an essay about the appeal of Andrews's work for The Believer magazine some years later). Solid work, that one only wishes had been followed by sequels...though in a sense, the Wiater could be seen as one...

Courtesy Locus:
Faces of Fear: Encounters with the Creators of Modern Horror Douglas E. Winter (Pan 0-330-31246-4, Jul ’90, £3.99, 334pp, pb, cover by Dave McKean) Reprint (Berkley 1985) collection of interviews with horror writers, together with a section on shops selling horror fiction and lists of the best horror films and books. These latter sections (at least) have been revised for this edition.
Stanley Wiater's book, first published in 1990, features shorter interviews with more writers...and still manages to include only Anne Rice, another bestselling but not all that good writer of horror, among the men, while ignoring Kate Wilhelm, Angela Carter, Joyce Carol Oates, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and all others who at least occasionally but vitally contributed to the horror literature...and a number of the same writers, somewhat unsurprisingly, who appeared in Winter's volume reappear here (a double-handful), while still somewhat oddly missing Leiber, among others. (Wiater's book does include such important folk as John Saul, Dean Koontz, and the actually good John Farris, as well as the then still up and coming Joe R. Lansdale and Robert McCammon and "insiders" such as Les Daniels and Graham Masterson, all missing from Winter's lineup.) Interestingly, and more famously at least in some cirucles, this volume was followed by a television series a decade later in which Wiater was able to interview on-camera a number of these people and a rather diverse lot of others, leading to a second (and, Ron Clinton tells us in comments, otherwise unrelated) book of the same title in 2001 from Cemetery Dance Press:

Forrest J. Ackerman --
Joan Aiken --
Peter Atkins --
Rick Baker --
Clive Barker --
Jill Bauman --
Rick Berry --
Stephen R. Bissette --
Robert Bloch --
Ray Bradbury --
Gary Braunbeck --
Poppy Z. Brite --
Edward Bryant --
Jack Cady --
Ramsey Campbell --
John Carpenter --
Hugh B. Cave --
R. Chetwynd-Hayes --
Joseph A. Citro --
Alan M. Clark --
Simon Clark --
Douglas Clegg --
Larry Cohen --
Nancy A. Collins --
Roger Corman --
Matthew J. Costello --
Wes Craven --
Peter Crowther --
Les Daniels --
Frank Darabont --
Ellen Datlow --
Tananarive Due --
Bob Eggleton --
Harlan Ellison --
Dennis Etchison --
John Farris --
Christa Faust --
Jo Fletcher --
Neil Gaiman --
Mick Garris --
H.R. Giger --
Christopher Golden --
Stuart Gordon --
Charles Grant --
Martin H. Greenberg --
Paula Guran --
Laurell K. Hamilton --
David G. Hartwell --
Rick Hautala --
James Herbert --
Brian Hodge --
Nancy Holder --
Stephen Jones --
Jack Ketcham --
Nancy Kilpatrick --
Stephen King. Kathe Koja & Rick Leider --
Dean Koontz --
Ed Kramer --
Joe R. Lansdale --
Richard Laymon --
Christopher Lee --
Edward Lee --
Tanith Lee --
Brian Lumley --
Elizabeth Massie --
Richard Matheson & R.C. Matheson --
Robert R. McCammon --
Thomas F. Monteleone --
David Morrell --
Pat Morrisey --
Harry O. Morris --
Yvonne Navarro --
Kim Newman --
William F. Nolan --
Joyce Carol Oates --
Michael Reaves --
Wayne Allen Sallee --
Al Sarrantonio --
John Saul --
David J. Schow --
Darrell Schweitzer --
John Shirley --
Dan Simmons --
Lisa Snellings --
Craig Spector --
Joseph Stefano --
R.L. Stine --
Peter Straub --
Whitley Strieber --
Lucy Taylor --
Melanie Tem & Steve Rasnic Tem --
Thomas Tessier --
Edo Van Belkom --
Karl Edward Wagner --
F. Paul Wilson --
Gahan Wilson --
Stan Winston --
Douglas E. Winter --
Bernie Wrightson --
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro --
Beth Gwinn & Stanley Wiater.

Meanwhile, Christopher Golden's anthology is a solid commercial idea but not altogether the most satisfying read in execution, as many of the writers took their task here more or less seriously than others...and sometimes the more breezy, such as Wiater's survey of the most disturbing films, traditional horror and otherwise, he's aware of, are more effective than the more seriously-intended, such as Paul Sammon's study of David Lynch's then-recent (for this 1992 book) films. Nonetheless, it's an amusing book to poke around in...rather as with a given issue of the often horror-fiction-writer-laden Video Watchdog magazine...and, lo!, a small slew of women writers were asked to contribute, including Yarbro, the late Melissa Mia Hall, Nancy A. Collins, Kathryn Ptacek and Katherine Ramsland...along with Lansdale, Ed Gorman, and the recently late Philip Nutman (but, oddly, no Kim Newman).  Both the first Wiater volume and Cut! won the Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association for best nonfiction book of their years.

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links: continuing catch-up mode...

Dorothy Dandridge
Back into gathering up the current and recently "missed" reviews of the films at the links below, including duel reviews of The Outlaw and Creature with the Atom Brain...and perhaps even my own long-delayed contributions will be entered soon (my favorite recent overlooked film: It's a Disaster, the funniest of the recent slate of end of the world films, among those I've seen).  Please let me know if I've missed yours or anyone else's Overlooked items...and thanks to all who contribute and read these...

Bill Crider: All of Me [trailer]

Brian Arnold: Hallowe'en wrap-up

BV Lawson: Media Murder

Beverly Garland in Gunslinger
Elizabeth Foxwell: Crime Wave

Ed Lynskey: Gunslinger; Ain't Them Bodies Saints?Alias Nick BealStill Mine

Evan Lewis: Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier; The Jack Benny Show with Clint Walker;  Abbott & Costello Meet... horror comedies; "Alice's Wonderland"; Popeye v. SuperBluto: "She-Sick Sailors"; Mr. Wong, Detective; Tip of a Bone, a film fantasy; Young Buffalo Bill; Mark of the Gorilla; A Night in Casablanca
 
George Kelley: The History Boys

Iba Dawson: Dorothy Dandridge; Edith Head

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Naked City (tv); the Hal Roach Studios

J. Kingston Pierce: Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You
Linda Darnell

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "The Money" (by Henry Slesar); "Pen Pal" (likewise)

Jackie Kashian: Jane Edith Wilson

Jacqueline T. Lynch: The Smiling Ghost

Jake Hinkson: Linda Darnell

James Reasoner: Zombieland

Jerry House: Tiger Fangs

John Charles: Birth of the Living Dead; Pink Lady and Jeff; Planet of the Apes (television series)

John F. Norris: Hallowe'en Films: The Lair of the White Worm; Outcast; The Skeleton Key; She Creature; Apartment Zero; The Serpent and the Rainbow; It!; Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn!); Veronica's Room

Juri Nummelin: The Intruder; Shock Corridor; Shivers (aka They Came from Within); Alphaville; True Confessions; Cartes sur table (aka Attack of the Robots)

Kelly Robinson: Hitchcock films as Penguin paperbacks

Kliph Nesteroff: Frankie Man (and the NYC nightclub life of the 1950s)

Laura: The Go-Getter

Lucy Brown: The Outlaw

Martin Edwards: The Wrong Mans

Michael Shonk: TV Series Remade/Revived

Mystery Dave: The Glass-Bottom Boat

Diabolique
Patti Abbott: This Sporting Life; Billy Liar; Bus Riley's Back in Town; Leave Her to Heaven; What's Eating Gilbert Grape?; Diabolique; The Falcon and the Snowman; My Sister Eileen; The Asphalt Jungle; The Panic in Needle Park

Pearce Duncan: Garage Sale of the Damned

Pop My Culture: Paul F. Tompkins and Speakeasy

Prashant Trikannad: The Outlaw; A Few Good Men; "Ants in the Pants"; Jim Carrey and Ray Romano; The Concrete Jungle; US Presidential Films from an Indian perspective; In the Heat of the Night; Indian television censorship; Just Between Friends; Stepmom

Randy Johnson: Black Killer; Luke Short adaptations: Vengeance Valley; Coroner Creek; One More to Hell (aka Uno di piu all'Inferno); A Genius, Two Partners and a Dope (aka Un genio, due compari, un pollo); The Outfit; Buddy Goes West (aka Occhio alla penna); Wanted (1967 film); Creature with the Atom Brain; Life is Tough, Eh, Providence? (aka La vita, a volte,  e molto dura, vero Providenzza?); Adventures of Kitty O'Day; The Price of Power (aka Il prezzo di portere); Top 10 western movie gunfights; First Men in the Moon; Sky Murder; "Star Trek Into Darkness: The Honest Trailer"; Alive or Preferably Dead (aka Vivo o, preferibilmente, morti aka Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid); The Panther's Claw

Rick: My Favorite Brunette; Rio Bravo

Rod Lott: Only God Forgives; Scorchy; Super Fuzz; Ban the Sadist Videos!

Ron Scheer: Breakheart Pass; Silver Lode; Quigley Down Under; Shoot Out: Good for Nothing; Broncho Billy
The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Scott Cupp: Radio Ranch; The Mask of Fu Manchu; Logan's Run; The Adventures of Prince Achmed; Creature with the Atom Brain; Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow; The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T 

Sergio Angelini: The Edgar Wallace Anthology (of Brit film adaptations)

Stacia Jones: Shadow of a Doubt; The Tomb of Ligeia; Orgasmo (aka Paranoia); The Loved One Winter Meeting

Stephen Bowie: Peyton Place (television series)

Stephen Gallagher: Now You See It; Getting started in the industry... 

Television Obscurities: Hallowe'en on network television over the decades...

Todd Mason: Borgen's third season begins in the US.

Yvette Banek: Heat of the Sun;  Arsenic and Old Lace; The Scarlet Claw; Dracula's Daughter; Werewolf of London; 20 Favorite SF Films; The Middle of the Night; The Man from Snowy River; The Wind and the Lion