As I just read the newest volume, let's revisit CHILDREN OF THE WHALES!

As you probably know, I'm a big noir guy, mostly prose, but certainly films are up my alley as well. We know where noir originated (in the pages of Black Mask magazine, if you can't recall), but where did film noir begin?

Many historians and critics claim this little gem, STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR, is the very first true film noir.

Even if it wasn't historicall significant, this film deserves to be considered film royalty. Directed by Boris Ingster (his first film) and art-directed by Van Nest Polgase (also art directed on CITIZEN KANE), the film practically oozes atmosphere--that sweaty, desperate tension from which noir springs--and looks amazing while it does so.It also stars one of the greatest character actors of all time - Peter Lorre and he's at his creepiest here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit.

The plot is a classic set-up: reporter Micheal Ward gets the scoop of a lifetime when he happens upon a murder and becomes the key witness at the trial of the petty criminal, Joe Briggs, found at the scene standing over the body. Briggs claims he's innocent and claims that he found the victim already dying. Ward's testimony convicts Briggs, who is sentenced to the death

This turns out to be wonderful for Ward's career, but he soon has doubts (planted by his fiancee) as to whether Briggs really is the killer or just an unlucky bypasser as he claimed. When a similar murder occurs and Ward is again on the scene, he reports the crime - only to be accused by the police of being the killer himself.

The story is interesting and contains one of the most surreal, disturbing dream-sequences mid-century Hollywood ever devised. And, as I said, the film looks incredible and makes astounding use of light and shadow to create what would become the archetypal film noir look.

You can't help but be suspicious of a young Peter Lorre when he's lit that way. (I mean, he is the titular stranger, but still...)

And Ward's isolation as is palpable. 

It's a great film and even if you aren't a noir buff, it's something you should check out simply as an important piece of film history.

I stumbled on this quite accidentally and, honestly, wasn't expecting much, but I found myself enjoying it quite a bit.

As I said, I'd never heard of Edward S. Aarons or his CIA agent hero, Sam Durell, and the the above novel (third in the series), was one I obtained through a lot of random Gold Medal novels bought on eBay. Ostensibly, it's a series of Cold War spy novels, twenty-eight in all, written between 1956 and 1983, and I wasn't that eager to read it both because I'm not really a fan of spy fiction and because much of the stuff from the time period has a distinctly Flemingesque flavor (hey, it sold, right?).

ASSIGNMENT - STELLA MARNI surprised me, though, in that it's nothing at all like most spy novels I've encountered. In fact, it's more like ninety-percent mystery novel, ten-percent spy novel - and only that because it deals with Soviet-era spy rings and the "detective" is a CIA agent.

The mystery is decent one, though, a little thin once you get into the meat of the novel. Essentially, Iron Curtain refugees in the US are being blackmailed into decrying America as capitalist pig-dogs and repatriating themselves to their countries of origin. Frank Greenwald, a lonely, middle-aged bachelor, has fallen in love with one such refugee. His brother, Art, happens to be a member of the CIA, working under section chief Sam Durell, and he asks his boss for help. Shortly after, both Frank and Art are murdered and now it's personal for Sam.

It has all the hallmarks of a crime novel, with the crusading detective looking to right a wrong against a seemingly impossible to beat enemy, complete with fist-fights, occasional shooting matches, and sexy damsels in distress. Throughout it, though, there's a pervasively patriotic message as well as a humanitarian one. Sam Durell firmly believes that there is no such thing as American vs Soviet or Capitalist vs Communist on a human level, only people trying their best to live their lives in peace and safety. It's stated over and over in various ways and it's actually an unusual message for a novel of the time.

In the end, of course, the detective triumphs, as we knew he would, but he's also a changed person, which is another deviation from the standard formula. In many such works, especially series works, things sort of reset to normal at the end (or at least there's an implication that such will happen). In this, though, Durell is left with a feeling that things will never quite be the same again after the experiences he's had. He's encountered true evil for the first time and it has nothing to do with socio-economic politics. Whether that continues to be the case in subsequent novels, I don't yet know.

Nitty-gritty: did I love this novel? No, but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and if I see more of Aarons' CIA detective hero, I'll definitely give them a shot.

This Saturday is FCBD and while I will not be doing any appearances, there are thirteen free comics right here on my website for you to enjoy!

Check 'em out right here or click the image below to be whisked away.

Enjoy!

Since I revisited PRIEST recently, I thought I'd revisit Min-Woo Hyung's other manhwa series, GHOSTFACE.

This one does not hold up so well.

Whereas PRIEST brought up a lot of interesting and heavy questions concerning religion, what it means to humanity and to individuals and whether beings as insignificant as humans can even have meaningful relationships with their gods, being one-sided as they necessarily are and mixed all of it with horror-action GHOSTFACE is your basic action-thriller.

Supposedly inspired by Hyung's being a fan of the American rapper Ghostface Killah, it revolves around a fictional island where, sometime in the first half of the 20th century, a group of criminals, after escaping from one of the world's most hardcore prisons, set up a sort of self-imposed exile colony, with the rest of the world's unspoken agreement to leave them alone so long as they never left. When other criminals around the world hear of this, they flock there, willingly giving up whatever freedom they might have had in the outside world for a chance to escape punishment for their crimes. The catch? No one can leave the island. Ever. They will be summarily executed by authorities from the outside world's various governments if they do and are noticed. Worse, if they leave and try to come back, their own people will kill them. The denizens of the island term people who have left "Ghostfaces" because, presumably, they are dead to the island's society. It kind of doesn't fit, does it? It's a rather clumsy use of a name that Hyung had almost certainly decided on using before coming up with the premise.

So nobody leaves and it isn't an issue. Until someone does: an unnamed denizen of the island shows up on the mainland, performs an incredibly daring robbery of a secret lab owned by one of the world's largest corporations and steals an experimental drug designed to make people into super-soldiers. They are unable to stop him, but manage to track him back to the island (initially the corporation doesn't know if he's escaping to the island or returning to it), sending a group of corporate commandos after him. Their goal is to retrieve or destroy the drug and make it back off the island without what passes for its authorities knowing they were there, as it would set off an international incident.

Of course, it doesn't work out as planned and they are almost immediately found out. The man who stole the drug has, of course, used it (all of it, apparently, the reader is sort of shown; we're left to assume he's used it all, anyway) on himself and become an insanely powerful being of unmatched fighting prowess, slaughtering most of the commando team - except for a lone, female survivor, who is rescued by the current king of the island (pictured on the cover above), a mysterious man who has animal-like powers of his own. Being as she needs to get back whatever remains of the drug and find out why it was stolen in the first place (was the criminal hired by a corporate rival? Did he somehow find out about the drug on his own? And if so, how?) and the king of the island must destroy this "ghostface" to preserve the island's traditions and his own place of power, they team up.

While a somewhat lengthy recap, it's a pretty basic set up when you get down it - and that's where the first volume (actually only two chapters of the comic; I believe the original Korean edition had four chapters) ends.

A few things:

First, this is in full-color, an opinion about which I'm undecided on. It took me a bit to get used to Hyung's art in PRIEST. From a technical standpoint, it's not especially good, but he has an amazing ability to use negative space to maximum effect and his artwork is some of the best I've ever seen at conveying motion. His artwork often seems as if it's moving on the page of its own accord. In color--which frankly, varied between not very good and excellent, as if it was done by multiple people (which it may have been, considering how manga and manhwa artists have stables of assistants)--much of that is lost. The color, when it's good, gives some new and interesting facets to the art that aren't present in Hyung's black and white art, but I almost think I would have preferred to see this strictly in black and white to make full use of Hyung's artistic strengths.

Second, the story is very, very thin. There's simply not much to start off with and Hyung makes little attempt to build on it. Granted, this first volume is only two 70ish-page chapters, but I just don't see how he could go much beyond the simple search, fight, chase and repeat scenario he's set up here.

Not that it even matters ultimately because...

Like PRIEST, it seems GHOSTFACE was never completed, going on hiatus after five volumes were published in Korea and never being resumed. Funny, since Hyung quit PRIEST (after 16 volumes, literally in the middle of freakin' fight scene) to do GHOSTFACE.

In PRIEST, Hyung showed that he's one of those creators who may not be at the highest point artistically but nevertheless has a knack for using his talents to maximum effect and putting together a hell of story. In GHOSTFACE, it really felt like he just had a cool title he wanted to use and his reputation allowed him to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I liked GHOSTFACE for what it was, but it's just not very much.

I do like being able to see a different side of Hyung as a creator. And I only paid $3 for the book so I feel I got my money's worth. If there was more available in English before the first volume, and I could find them cheaply, I think I'd probably read more of it, but I don't feel like I can recommend it to anyone unless they, too, can find it for dirt-cheap and fully prepared to read a story without an ending.

I've talked about PRIEST on the site before, but I recently re-read the series and felt like revisiting it here as I had some new thoughts. So, without further ado...

This one isn't quite noir, but it's certainly a good-looking, stylish well-made film. It's one of those classy '40s mystery films that set a visual bar many tried, and failed to reach. In terms of actual story, it's not what I want from a mystery, but it's still entertaining.

Let's take a look at The Unsuspected.

Based on a novel of the same name by Charlotte Armstrong, and directed by Michael Curtiz (director of Casablanca), the film centers around Victor Grandison, a popular true-crime radio show's host, whose secretary is found dead in his home. This would be suspicious enough, but a niece of his, Mathilda, had also recently been "lost," and presumed killed, in a boating accident. Two deaths around the man in such a short time throw up some red flags, to say the least.

Shortly after, at a party thrown by Victor's other niece, Althea, a man calling himself Steve Howard shows up claiming to be the missing/presumed dead Mathilda's husband - the first anyone had heard of her having one. Victor, rightly suspicious, asks a detective he's acquainted with to look into this newcomer. In the process Mathilda is found, and claims to have never met her "husband."

Several heads are put together and eventually, almost everyone confides in each other that they believe Grandison killed his secretary, to whom Steve Howard was actually married. He concocted his ruse to attempt to lure Grandison into a confession, believing he killed both Steve's wife and his own niece. 

After that, it's mostly a matter of running down the clock. Police are involved, some action scenes occur and Grandison, knowing he's trapped, goes on air and confesses his crimes to his listeners. The film ends, after a little time has passed via movie magic, with a walk through the prison yard.

The thing about the movie is that it's not really a mystery because we're shown all along the way what both Grandison and his pursuers (even before they really know it's him they're pursuing) are doing, so it's more of a mid-energy thriller than a mystery. And the more I think about it, it only looks like noir, without the sweaty, desperation that characterizes the genre. This is all very classy, very high society stuff we've got going on here. 

But it's a fine film. It's not as well-known as some of Curtiz's other works, and it doesn't really deserve to be, but it also doesn't deserve to be forgotten.

Something I stumbled across and thought I'd share: a relatively-recent review of my first story collection, THE ALTAR IN THE HILLS, from The Haunted Reading Room. 

Thank you, Mallory Hearts!
​
And if you haven't read it, THE ALTAR IN THE HILLS is, of course, still available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

If you've read THE ALTAR IN THE HILLS and want more Lovecraftian horror from me, don't forget to pick up my novel THIS ROUGH OLD WORLD and the trade collecting the four-issue comic series I did with artist Hugo Petrus, MYTHOS: LOVECRAFT'S WORLDS!

I've written a little bit about Vampire Hunter D, and my love for Hideyuki Kikuchi's work in general, before, but I recently read some (new to me) entries in the VHD novel series so it's much on my mind again.

As it's hard to talk in a meaningful way about such a long series (there's over 30 novels in the series, plus manga adaptations and a prequel series, set three-thousand or so years before the beginning of VHD during the Human/Vampire Wars), I'll talk a little bit about the most-accessible form the series takes, the two film adaptations.

Here's a movie I discovered at 4-something in the morning a few nights ago. It's a "reality-based noir," as the description I found it labeled under calls it, based on the same true-life events as the slightly-later and more famous film Call Northside 777.

So, how does "Railroaded!" stack up?

Well.

It's a pretty basic plot: Steve Ryan, average Joe Citizen (whose van is being used for an illegal gambling operation without his knowledge) is tagged with a murder rap he didn't commit; honest, hard-working policeman dutifully gathers evidence and goes through his process, despite everyone being convinced they already know who the killer is, and in the process becomes convinced Ryan is innocent.

There's really not much to it. It's pretty rote.

You may notice on the poster, though, (which I hadn't seen until I wrote this) that noir-favorite bad-guy John Ireland is in this. Here, he plays one of the real killers:

He's dark and ice-cool and he'd kill you as soon as look at you... and he douses his bullets in perfume, which is what he's doing here. Yes, he's giving himself an absolutely ridiculous calling card as a gunman that would instantly implicate him in any crimes he commits. It's that kind of movie and even a great villain character-actor couldn't save it.

Maybe it was my exhaustion at the time, but this movie didn't even not hold my attention, it opened the front door and made shooing motions, encouraging me to find something better to do. It's definitely forgotten for a reason.

Watch Call Northside 777, it's a better film and truer to the real facts of the case.