Overlooked Films: Batman and Robin (1949)

After my first viewing of the first Batman serial from 1943 (reviewed HERE), which I enjoyed quite a bit, I thought this one might be a step up. Sadly, no. In fact, in all but one aspect, it's a step down. And that single improvement is the one displayed right here - the movie poster art.

For me, the biggest letdown is the script. While the first serial had some witty lines, and seemed in line with other film dialogue of the '40s, this one never rises above the level of a Golden Age comic book. In other words, it's predictable and dull.

Then there's the acting. In Batman, Lewis Wilson was an engaging Bruce Wayne. I had high hopes for his replacement, Robert Lowery, because Lowery looks sort of like Johnny Weismuller, with a touch of Victor Mature. But aside from looking sort of like those guys, he doesn't do much. As Bruce Wayne, he simply yawns a lot. And John Duncan, the new Robin, looks way too old to be running around in a yellow cape and Speedos.

The costume department didn't do Batman any favors, either. His belt looks like it was borrowed from a Vegas chorus girl – and the cowl is just laughable. The ears stick out like devil’s horns, the eye slits don’t line up with his eyes, and the nose piece forms a long floppy beak.

As in the first serial, there is no Batmobile, probably a budget cutter. But this time, the car keeps changing. Sometimes our heroes are driving a Mercury convertible, sometimes a different make of convertible, and sometimes a sedan. Worst of all, the sedan is the same one the bad guys were driving in the previous episode. It would seem that when it came time to shoot, they just grabbed whatever was available in the Columbia Pictures motor pool.

Another letdown: There's no Wayne Manor. Instead, Bruce and Dick inhabit a relatively modest home in the suburbs, and simply park their car in the driveway. Apparently the neighbors don't notice when two guys in superhero suits rush out of the house and jump into the convertible.

The master villain, on the other hand, lives in a mansion on a hill, and has a secret entrance through his fireplace to a complex of caves below. Jeez, I wonder where they got that idea?

 

More Overlooked Filmish stuff at SWEET FREEDOM.

Art Gallery: Savage Tales I

John Buscema

John Buscema

Forgotten Books: Dashiell Hammett's Secret Agent X-9 (now playing on BBC !)

I'm rerunning this review to celebrate the all-new 4-part radio drama NOW PLAYING (for a very limited time) on BBC Radio online. The show is based on the first comic strip continuity, "You're the Top," which appears in both books shown below. How much of that original story was really Hammett's work, and how much should be attributed to unnamed editors at the King Features Syndicate, remains in doubt, but it's still a crackling good tale. Episode 1 will be available for on-demand listening only until Tuesday (UK time), Episode 2 until Wednesday, and so on, so don't delay! The link to the show is right here:
DASHIELL HAMMETT'S SECRET AGENT X-9 ON BBC RADIO 4

Maybe this book's not really forgotten, but since the latest edition was published 20 years ago, it's at least neglected. You've no doubt heard of the strip. Hammett plotted and wrote the dialogue for most of 1934, while Raymond continued the artwork for another year. I don't know who actually named the character, but the concept seems to have come directly from William Randolph Hearst, who wanted "the toughness of a detective like (Dick) Tracy with the the mystery of a secret operative like (Dan) Dunn."

With a team like Hammett and Raymond, you know this is great stuff. The only question is . . . do you buy the green edition (Nostalgia Press 1976), the red edition (International Polygonics Ltd, 1983) or the 1990 book (which I have not seen) published by Kitchen Sink?

Here's the lowdown on the two I have. Both books have the first continuity, a long story sometimes known as "You're the Top". Both also contain the much shorter second and third stories, "The Mystery of the Silent Guns" and "The Martyn Case". But that's where things get tricky. According to William F. Nolan, Hammett left the strip during the run of "The Martyn Case", having already submitted a plot for the next story, "The Torch Car Case".

The green book skips "The Torch Car Case" and jumps ahead to "The Iron Claw Gang" and "The Egyptian Jewel Case", two stories in which Hammett apparently had no hand.

The red book gives us "The Torch Car Case", then skips "The Iron Claw Gang" and "The Egyptian Jewel Case" to present "The Fixer", a story scripted by Saint creator Leslie Charteris.

And there's more to consider. The introduction to the green book, while not lengthy, is excerpted from a critique by Bill Blackbeard, who certainly knows his comic strip stuff. The red book has a longer and more fact-packed intro by Nolan, who surely knows his Hammett.

Which are you leaning toward, the green or the red? Well, here's one more consideration. The green book does a better job of reproducing the strips, which are uniformly sharp. Taken on its own, the red book looks OK, but side-by-side with the green the artwork looks a bit muddy.

The Kitchen Sink edition is in letterbox format (like the green book), and 206 pages (30 pages more). According to Tom Roberts, it contains all of Alex Raymond's work on the strip, which the other books do not.

These books won't lay flat enough to scan full strips, but I managed to snag a few sample panels from the green book. You may, of course, click to enlarge.

More Forgotten Books at Sweet Freedom!

The Leopard Couch - A new Sax Rohmer collection!

Here's another instant classic from Black Dog Books. The Leopard Couch is Volume 2 of The Sax Rohmer Library, a follow-up to last year's entry, The Green Spider. Like the first volume, this one features four stories that were never before published - at least in their complete and original form - in the United States.

But while The Green Spider featured mystery and suspense stories, The Leopard Couch focuses on the fantastic and supernatural. And Rohmer's style, which is just naturally sort of creepy, lends itself very well to this type of tale.

If you haven't read Sax Rohmer, the best way I can describe him is to say - think Arthur Conan Doyle on drugs. Even Rohmer's mundane scenes have a dreamy quality, and when he wants to create a really mystic mood, he goes all out.

It's the mood Rohmer creates - and draws the reader into - that give these stories their power. The fantastic and supernatural elements themselves are rather subtle, making them all the more believable. You'll find no zombies eating brains in this collection. Instead, people have dreams that just might explain seemingly impossible occurences. There are strange lights, sounds and smells, and maybe a set of moving footprints with no body attached. An aura of evil might fall over a house, or an object, or a person. But the true manifestation of that evil is always just out of sight, where it stretches the imagination just enough - without reaching the breaking point.

Surprisingly, given the author's long-time association with Dr. Fu Manchu, most of these stories involve the mysticism of ancient Egypt. And that's a good thing, because to me, Egypt has always rated way higher on the creepy scale than China.

Click HERE to visit Black Dog Books and check out The Leopard Couch and other lost treasures of pulp fiction.

Overlooked Films: Hop-a-long Cassidy (1935)

William Boyd made a career of playing Hopalong Cassidy. Between 1935 and 1954 he starred as Hoppy in 66 films and 49 TV episodes. But it all started right here. The original film title was Hop-a-long Cassidy, but it was renamed Hopalong Cassidy Enters for the 1946 reissue, and is more commonly known by that name today.

Normally, the first film of such a long series is quaint to look back upon, and see how much the character has changed over the years. Not so with Hoppy. Boyd's depiction springs to life fully realized, and there's almost no difference between this Hoppy and the one that made his last bow twenty years later.

Contrary to the poster above, and the colorized lobby cards below, Hoppy does not wear a green or red shirt. Right from the beginning, he sports his signature black hat, black outfit, white hair and white scarf, and rides his white horse. Boyd, too, seems timeless. He was 40 when this was this was made, but looks the same as he did at 60.

And he makes an impressive entrance. The first time we see Hoppy, he appears on horseback, on top of a hill, at least a hundred yards from the action. But he needs only a single pistol shot to knock the bad guy's gun out of his hand and save the life of another Bar 20 cowboy.

Also on hand here is Gabby Hayes. But this time, he's not a sidekick. He's more of a mentor and father figure, and is foully murdered, giving Hoppy more motivation to kick bad guy butt in the big finish. The Three Musketeers referred to in the ad above are Hoppy and two other Bar 20 hands (and Clarence Mulford characters) Johnny Nelson and Red Connors. At the end (SPOILER ALERT) they go riding off together, in search of more adventure.

Are YOU in search of more adventure? You'll no doubt find it at the Overlooked Films Round-up, now playing over at SWEET FREEDOM.

Art Galley: Ridin' the Rio Grande (part 1)

1950

1942

1932

Forgotten Stories: "The Dancing Rats" by Richard Sale

As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of Mr. Richard Sale. (If not, click HERE to peruse my posts about him.) Still, I was a bit surprised to find this story, "The Dancing Rats," in The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories.

Why? Because Sale was not known as a Black Mask writer. I knew he'd done this tale, because I have the issue, but a little digging revealed that this, from June 1942, was his only true sale to the magazine. (Two more stories appeared at the end of the mag's run in the 50s, but they were reprints from Detective Fiction Weekly.)

Don't get me wrong. I was glad to see it in the Black Lizard collection, just like I was glad to see in BM. Sale was an important member of the hardboiled school, and it's fitting he should be represented in both places.

Still, "The Dancing Rats" (not to be confused with the Daffy Dill story "Dancing Rats" that appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly) is by no means a detective story, and only marginally a mystery, and I'm a little surprised it appeared in Black Mask at all. It's much more in tune with the war-on-the-homefront stories he was selling to Saturday Evening Post, and my best guess is that Post had more than they could handle, so Sale let this go to a lower paying market.

The tale's hero is Dr. Nicholas Adams, renown for his work with lepers, the same character who starred in Sale's 1940 non-mystery novel Cardinal Rock. (The same character also appeared in his first mystery novel, Lazarus #7, in 1942, though the doc's name was changed.) The Japanese are plotting to wipe out all life in Honolulu, and our man Nick, with his medical acumen, is the burg's only hope. I won't tell you what the plot involves, but I'll give you a hint. It ain't leprosy.

Stay tuned for more blathering about Richard Sale. I'm overdue for a re-reading of his second mystery novel, Passing Strange.

Friday = Forgotten Books = pattinase. 

Shock Troops of Justice !

Tom Roberts, publisher of Black Dog Books, does us all a great service by rescuing forgotten stories by pulp legends like Lester Dent, Frederick Nebel and Talbot Mundy. But he also brings to light a lot of great work by guys I never heard of - like Robert R. Mill.

Shock Troops of Justice collects twelve stories that appeared in Blue Book between 1935 and 1938, all focusing on Duke Ashby of the F.B.I. The most shocking thing about them is that they were far more realistic than other crime stories of the day. In a preface to the first story, Mill says he met personally with J. Edgar Hoover and gained full access to the inner workings, methods and case files of the F.B.I. How true that is I don't know, but he sure seems to know his stuff.

While these stories are fiction - and well-written fiction to boot - the criminals, the crimes and the methods Duke Ashby and his fellow agents employ all ring true. I picked up the book intending to sample the first story, and got so interested I read three in a row. These are tales, I have no doubt, that Dashiell Hammett would have admired.

Duke Ashby is Mill's representation of the ideal federal agent - young, bright, clean cut, modest, fearless, dedicated and straighter than an arrow. Ashby and his fellow agents, in fact, are the only elements of the stories that are not entirely realistic. They're grown-up Boy Scouts, along the lines of Jimmy Christopher, Operator No. 5. The difference is that while other pulp heroes are battling fantastic, world-beating terrors, Duke Ashby & friends go after kidnappers and bank robbers. And that's a good thing. The pulpiness of the heroes emphasizes the reality of everything else.

Blue Book is not a mag we hear much about today, but it was one of the best of its time. Mill's work was running alongside that of guys like Carl Sandburg, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Bedford-Jones, and he deserved to be there. He had a sly and clever wit, and many of his lines sneak up on you and make you smile.

Check out Shock Troops of Justice, and the rest of the amazing Black Dog line, right HERE.