October 14th, 1970
The Director
by Henry Denker
Richard W. Baron, 1970
The film adaptation was never made.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Book Ad of the Week: 144 PICCADILLY (1972)
March 7th, 1972
144 Piccadilly
by Samuel Fuller
Richard W. Baron, 1971
The film adaptation was never made.
The film adaptation was never made.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales
"Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales" was a weekly syndicated comic strip that ran from July 13th, 1952 to February 15th, 1987 and serialized (usually in 13 weeks) the Walt Disney movies that were currently in theatrical release. I grew up a huge fan of the Disney live-action comedies of the 1960s and '70s -- especially the ones starring Dean Jones, Kurt Russell, Tim Conway and Don Knotts -- but only had limited exposure to the comic strip because the newspapers in my neck of the woods never carried it. I caught up with some of the stories when they were reprinted as comic books in the "Walt Disney Showcase" series...
...but many of the films, like the nine sampled below, never appeared in comic form again after their initial newspaper runs. I'd like to see these and others get reprinted in color eventually (Jack Kirby's adaptation of THE BLACK HOLE would be a great way to kick off the series), but for now I'm satisfied with the black-and-white copies I've been able to track down.
THE SHAGGY D.A. (9/5/1976 - 11/28/1976)
The Paperback Film Projector book, which is slated for release later this year, will not include comic book or comic strip adaptations unless they were also published as mass market paperbacks, but we will review them here on the blog.
...but many of the films, like the nine sampled below, never appeared in comic form again after their initial newspaper runs. I'd like to see these and others get reprinted in color eventually (Jack Kirby's adaptation of THE BLACK HOLE would be a great way to kick off the series), but for now I'm satisfied with the black-and-white copies I've been able to track down.
THE SHAGGY D.A. (9/5/1976 - 11/28/1976)
KING OF THE GRIZZLIES (3/1/1970 - 5/31/1970)
THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES (12/7/1969 - 2/22/1970)
NOW YOU SEE HIM, NOW YOU DON'T (4/2/1972 - 6/25/1972)
THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG (5/4/1975 - 6/29/1975)
ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING (7/6/1975 - 9/28/1975)
SNOWBALL EXPRESS (10/1/1972 - 12/31/1972)
THE LEGEND OF LOBO (7/2/1972 - 9/24/1972)
NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN (12/7/1975 - 2/29/1976)
The Paperback Film Projector book, which is slated for release later this year, will not include comic book or comic strip adaptations unless they were also published as mass market paperbacks, but we will review them here on the blog.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Drink the blood before it Klotz!
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Book Ad of the Week: Cinemabooks Go Wild!
All the Loving Couples (1969) was written by tough guy character actor Leo V. Gordon, based on his own screenplay. Mining a similar suburban sexual revolution storyline as BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE -- released the same year -- ALL THE LOVING COUPLES was a highly profitable independent release that is all but forgotten today. Originally rated X by the MPAA in 1969, it was edited to earn an R rating in 1972.
Leo Guild, a Holloway House author who wrote everything from Confidential Sex Survey and Street of Ho's to biographies of Josephine Baker and Darryl Zanuck for the publisher, novelized David Friedman's STARLET (1969), a softcore "behind the scenes" story about the making of skin flicks that Friedman remade years later as the hardcore MATINEE IDOL (1984).
How to Succeed with (The Opposite) Sex (1970) was penned by writer-director Bert I. Gordon. A soft sex comedy originally released by Billy Fine's Medford Films, the movie was rated X by the MPAA in '70 but edited for an R when reissued by Media Cinema in 1974.
Satyricon (1970) is a FELLINI'S SATYRICON tie-in edition of Paul Gillette's Satyricon: Memoirs of a Lusty Roman, first published by Holloway House in 1965.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Paperback Newsreel (January edition)
The big news this month: Two classic horror movie novelizations that fetch very high prices among collectors are back in print!
The rare and incredibly pricey CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON novelization (Dragon, 1954) by Vargo Statten [a.k.a. John Russell Fearn], originally published only in England as a hardcover that could set you back $1,500 to $3,000 these days, has returned in softcover and hardcover thanks to Bad Moon Books, and at much more affordable prices. This new edition contains the original novel plus stills from the movie, new cover art by Bob Eggleton and a new introduction by David Schow. Bad Moon also has limited edition hardcovers signed by Julie Adams and Ricou Browning, while Dark Delicasies is selling copies signed by Adams and Schow in advance of their book signing event on Saturday, February 11th at 2:00 pm.
Dean Owen's novelization of BRIDES OF DRACULA (Monarch, 1960), based on Peter Bryan's early draft of the screenplay and also pretty scarce, has returned to print in softcover and hardcover editions from Bear Manor Media as the first volume in a series of 1950s and '60s horror novelization reprints edited by noted film historian and author Philip J Riley. You can order the softcover directly from Bear Manor. The hardcover is only available through Cover Out and supplies are limited.
John Pinkney's Thirst (Circus, 1979) -- based on his screenplay for the Australian thriller starring Chantal Contouri, David Hemmings and Henry Silva -- is another extremely rare novelization that has returned from the dead recently, albeit as a Kindle-only exclusive. It can be ordered here for only $2.99!
Meanwhile, over at Centipede Press there are still a few copies available of their new limited edition hardcover movie tie-in of Robert Marasco's novel Burnt Offerings, signed by co-screenwriter William F. Nolan (who contributed a new afterword) and artist J.K. Potter (new half title and full title artwork). Print run: 150 copies. Head over to Centipede Press for more details.
The latest issue of Justin Marriott's wonderful 'zine The Paperback Fanatic (#21) just arrived, and the first thing that caught our eye was "Fit to be Tied," a new column dedicated to novelizations. For the maiden voyage, writer Graham Andrews covers Five Weeks in a Balloon by Gardner F. Fox (Pyramid, 1962), which he mislabels a "tie-in" when it's actually a novelization (A "movie tie-in" would've been the Jules Verne novel reprinted to promote the movie); otherwise, he knows his stuff, and we're looking forward to future installments. The issue also contains an obituary for John Burke (1922-2011), the prolific sci-fi author who penned novelizations ranging from The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Look Back in Anger to Moon Zero Two, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and the two Hammer Horror Omnibus collections. Issues of The Paperback Fanatic sell out almost instantly, so order now!
And finally, if you haven’t seen it yet and can still find a copy at your local newsstand or bookseller (if you even have a local newsstand or bookseller anymore), the latest Film Comment (Vol. 47, #6) features a good historical overview of novelizations by journalist Grady Hendrix. It's the November/December issue pictured above, and the article is titled “Pulp Fiction: In Appreciation of Movie Novelizations”
(pp.44-49). Check it out.
(pp.44-49). Check it out.
Compiled by
Darrin Venticinque, Michael Gingold, Chris Poggiali
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Book Ad of the Week: LADYCAT (1980)
April 25th, 1980Ladycat
by Nancy Greenwald
Crown Publishers, 1980
The film adaptation was never made.
Friday, January 6, 2012
The Adam Adult Cinemastrip: PINOCCHIO (1970)
Chris Warfield and Corey Allen's "adults only" version of Pinocchio was rated X by the MPAA in 1970 and originally released by Russ Meyer's company, Eve Productions, under the title THE VOLUPTUARY. By the time Adam Film World magazine issued this 66-page photo comic (or "adult cinemastrip") in October 1971, the onscreen title had been changed to PINOCCHIO, with all advertising materials hyping it as THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO, presumably so it wouldn't be confused with the Disney classic or Ron Merk's kiddie matinees like PINOCCHIO'S BIRTHDAY PARTY.
(Above: Note the new title pasted over THE VOLUPTUARY on this one-sheet)
Despite the title change, Warfield continued to secure bookings for the film as THE VOLUPTUARY as late as November of 1976 (His company, Lima Productions, ran the advertisement below in Boxoffice in advance of the 1974 drive-in season).
Riding the coattails of Bill Osco's X-rated musical ALICE IN WONDERLAND, which hit theaters in April of 1976 and was an immediate box-office success, Warfield created a new ad campaign for PINOCCHIO that was pure exploitation genius ("See the surprise when he lies! It's not his nose that grows!") and got it booked into drive-ins all over the country for the next eight years as well as cable TV and video exposure for years after that. After some re-editing, the MPAA gave it an R rating in 1977.
William Rotsler, the director of MANTIS IN LACE and a regular contributor to Adam Film World magazine, was the still photographer on the PINOCCHIO set and his photos were used for this first -- and only? -- "Adam Adult Cinemastrip." Liberties were taken with the story, and those familiar with the movie will notice a few major deviations in the first couple of pages included here.
Monica Gayle's character, Gepetta, is named "Cindy" for some reason.
The "friendly wizard" pictured below is nowhere to be found in the movie.
Dyanne Thorne plays a traditional (albeit frequently nude) Fairy Godmother in the movie, concerned only with Pinocchio and Gepetta's well-being. However, in the magazine she's a troublemaker who constantly puts Pinocchio in awkward situations.
Most important difference: in the movie the Fairy Godmother causes Pinocchio's penis to expand grotesquely every time he misbehaves, and this is considered punishment, but in the magazine the enormous appendage seems to be a positive rather than negative attribute (There are no shots of Pinocchio knocking over lamps and getting snagged in the drapes).
If Warfield's catalog ever gets a decent DVD release, this magazine would make an entertaining supplement on the PINOCCHIO special edition. A completely uncut and restored version of this movie is long overdue.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
SUMMER CAMP by Richard Woodley
Richard Woodley is the go-to writer for paperback adaptations of sports-related movies -- he’s novelized the BAD NEWS BEARS series, SLAP SHOT, BLUE CHIPS, and THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH, among others -- so I shouldn’t have been too surprised to learn that his young adult novel Summer Camp is also a novelization. Unlike all the others he’s written over the years, however, this one was adapted from a script that never got filmed. With the Bill Murray star vehicle MEATBALLS cleaning up at the box-office and LITTLE DARLINGS, GORP, STUCKEY’S LAST STAND and the R-rated Chuck Vincent effort SUMMER CAMP picking clean whatever was left, the last thing anyone needed during the 1979-‘80 movie season was another comedy set in a summer camp. Based on a screenplay by former actor Michael Norell (Captain Stanley on Emergency!) and published by Dell in April of 1979 -- two months before MEATBALLS hit theaters -- Summer Camp is aimed more at younger kids, relying on swirlies, snuggies and bad breath jokes for its laughs instead of sex, drugs and bathroom humor. Why it never got made is anyone’s guess, although I suspect the producer(s) took one look at the overcrowded playing field and decided to forfeit (Golan & Globus of Cannon Films killed their proposed camp comedy SUMMER SCORE around the same time). Summer camps would soon become the preferred mise-en-scène for massacres rather than mirth thanks to FRIDAY THE 13TH.
Camp Smilin’ Through, celebrating its thirty-third -- and possibly last -- summer of operation, has been losing more and more of its clientele each year to the larger, more modern and affluent camps in the area. In order to show the late owner’s greedy son that Smilin’ Through can still turn a profit (and prevent him from selling the land to condo developers), camp director Jack "Steamboat" Scarborough and his wife Annie "Tugboat" invite twenty tough, rowdy, mostly minority orphans to stay at the camp on the state’s dime. “My name is Luscious Moncrief, and I can whup any honky in this camp,” snarls the first orphan off the bus. White flight reduces the number of original kids to twenty by the next morning, creating two equal factions of children who are at each other’s throats until they settle their differences during the expected “Field Day” sports competitions (the camp equivalent of the “senior prom” climax in high school movies) and ultimately learn to respect one another. Myriad subplots include the search for a missing youngster, Steamboat’s awkward relationship with his teenage son Chet, a budding romance between two kids chosen to edit the camp’s newspaper, and “Crazy Wilson and his Hound of Death,” ghosts that supposedly haunt the surrounding woods but are actually a wise old Native American and his friendly dog, who live in a nearby cave. Two snuggies and a prolonged swirlie go to anyone who hasn’t already guessed whose land deed saves the camp at the end.
The target audience in 1979 would’ve enjoyed Summer Camp as a movie, but Woodley’s adaptation is hampered by the same flaw that plagues most comedy novelizations: it takes too many words to set up and execute what is visually a two-second cutaway or sight gag, so by the time the readers get to the end of the paragraph, they’ve already guessed the punchline. On top of that, Woodley’s saddled with wayyyyy too many characters from the first page on. It’s hard to take Steamboat seriously when he complains about having only thirty-three kids staying at the camp; at least he doesn’t have to slog through three chapters of backstory for all thirty-three of them, plus every single camp counselor! In a book that’s barely 175 pages long, it takes the first thirty to get everyone to the camp, and when the orphans arrive at the halfway point we get introduced to twenty more kids. And like summer camps themselves, the book is a breeding ground for nicknames, so the reader has a dozen or more of those to contend with as well. In a film this wouldn't even be an issue, but for what’s supposed to be a quick-read YA novel it’s a pain in the ass. To Norell’s credit, he handles the racial aspects of the story honestly, openly and fairly by giving the orphans as much humor, depth and intelligence as the other kids. I also like the fact that Steamboat is a likable, three-dimensional character when too often the camp directors in these movies are either tyrants or buffoons. Summer Camp had the potential to be a pretty good movie -- certainly no worse than MEATBALLS, and a good deal better than the others. File this one under “m” for missed opportunity.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Stark Views: The Violent World of Donald Westlake
by Chris Poggiali
After two roars from the MGM lion, we cut to tough guy Parker (Jim Brown) kicking open the door to his girlfriend Ellie’s apartment. He charges inside, searches the place, and finds Ellie (Diahann Carroll) sitting up in bed, dead, skewered to the headboard with a sword -- "stuck there like a scarecrow put away for the winter." Checking the closet, Parker discovers that the money from the stadium heist is missing, and then -- "Whoa, wait a minute!" some of you are yelling now, "I saw THE SPLIT and it didn’t start like that! And who the hell is this Parker guy?! Jim played McClain in that movie!" Yeah, yeah, I know -- but if the producers of THE SPLIT had been interested in making a great caper movie instead of just a mediocre action flick that wastes a once-in-a-lifetime cast, they would’ve stuck closer to their source material: The Seventh, a fast-paced, ingeniously plotted crime novel written by the late Donald E. Westlake, under his "Richard Stark" pseudonym. Published in 1966 as a 158-page paperback from Pocket Books, The Seventh tells the story of seven crooks who rob a stadium during a college football inter-conference game, and the violent complications that erupt before the take is divided. The title refers not only to the one-seventh share of the loot that each crook is due to receive, but also to the fact that this was the seventh novel written by Westlake under the Stark alias.
"Stark" is right. During their peak in the late 60s and early 70s, these cold, hard, stripped-down books were extremely popular in prison libraries across the country, due to the fact that the main characters are killers and thieves who always get away in the end. Twenty-four of the twenty-eight books are about ruthless criminal Parker -- possibly the toughest tough guy in the history of crime fiction --while other novels shine the spotlight on his frequent partner in crime, Alan Grofield, a wisecracking stage actor who commits armed robberies to support the community theatre he owns in Indiana. Parker is a professional crook -- "Banks, payrolls, armored cars, jewelers, anyplace that’s worth the risk" -- and his adventures focus on the elaborate heists in which he participates, as well as the inevitable carnage that follows, with a few exceptions: The Jugger, a strange mystery set in a small town in Nebraska, brilliantly pays homage to Jim Thompson’s "crazy sheriff" stories (The Killer Inside Me, Pop. 1280), while The Handle is surely to blame for all those mind-numbing men's action paperbacks that Pinnacle started mass-producing two or three years later. In Butcher’s Moon, Westlake tips his hat to Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest by dropping Parker and Grofield into the middle of a complicated plot involving gangsters and corrupt politicians. Grofield’s first three solo ventures (The Damsel, The Dame, and The Blackbird) are clumsy, lightweight affairs that turn the fourth book, the downbeat and nasty Lemons Never Lie, into a sucker punch.
In 1973, Berkley Medallion Books reissued most of the Parker novels as a numbered adventure series, "The Violent World of Parker," in an attempt to cash in on Pinnacle’s popular Destroyer and Executioner series (the Coffin Ed and Gravedigger mysteries by Chester Himes underwent a similar facelift around the same time). Titles were changed -- The Score became Killtown, for example -- but Berkley screwed up the whole thing by assigning the wrong number to almost every book in the series! For maximum enjoyment, the Stark books should be read in a certain order (see list below), since characters from earlier stories return, and previous adventures are frequently referred to and sometimes even continued. Bett Harrow, the woman who sets up Parker for blackmail in The Outfit, is dealt with in the following book, The Mourner. The Damsel opens with Grofield still recovering from the gunshot wounds he received in The Handle. Parker spends half of Plunder Squad on the hunt for George Uhl, the double-crossing lunatic who fouled up a bank heist split in The Sour Lemon Score, and at least half of Firebreak tracking down a trio of losers, also from The Sour Lemon Score, who put a contract out on his life. In Butcher’s Moon, Parker and Grofield return to the Fun Island amusement park to retrieve the $73,000 that Parker stashed at the end of Slayground. The last three books (Nobody Runs Forever, Ask the Parrot, Dirty Money) form a trilogy focusing on Parker’s robbery of armored trucks during a bank merger, and the problems evading law enforcement and moving the stolen cash.
Westlake was the mad scientist of crime fiction for nearly half a century and the Stark books showcase some of his more daring experiments with style and structure. The Blackbird and Slayground both open with the same botched armored car robbery, told from two different points of view: Grofield’s in The Blackbird, Parker’s in Slayground. The two books share the same opening chapter, but go off in completely different directions; Grofield is captured by the police, then recruited by the CIA (!) and sent to Quebec on a silly James Bond-type adventure with a beautiful secret agent from Africa (the "blackbird" of the title); Parker, who gets away with the loot, ends up tangling with mobsters and bad cops in a shuttered amusement park only one block away from the scene of the robbery! Even more bizarre is the jaw-dropping plot twist in Plunder Squad that sends Parker wandering into chapter eighteen of Dead Skip, the first DKA File mystery by Joe "Hammett" Gores. And then there’s Jimmy the Kid, the third installment in Westlake’s hilarious Dortmunder series (following The Hot Rock and Bank Shot), which has its hapless crooks using the nonexistent Stark novel Child Heist as the blueprint for their own bungled kidnapping attempt.
Big screen adaptations of Stark’s novels range from excellent to excruciating. The superb POINT BLANK (1967) departs from its source material (The Hunter) early on, while others are more faithful but not very strong as movies. Westlake didn't allow other writers to use the name "Parker," so Lee Marvin is Walker in POINT BLANK, Michel Constantin is Georges in MISE EN SAC (a.k.a. PILLAGED, based on The Score) (1967), Jim Brown is McClain in THE SPLIT (1968), Robert Duvall is Macklin in THE OUTFIT (1974), Peter Coyote is Stone in SLAYGROUND, and Mel Gibson is Porter in a second version of The Hunter, PAYBACK (1999), as well as director Brian Helgeland's revised cut, PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP (2007). For Jean-Luc Godard’s MADE IN U.S.A. (1966), Parker became pretty Anna Karina as journalist Paula Nelson, in a political thriller bearing little resemblance to its credited source, The Jugger (though Westlake won a lawsuit against the film’s producer when he wasn’t paid for use of his novel).
The Novels of Violence by Richard Stark
The Hunter (a.k.a. Point Blank! - 1962) ***
The Man with the Getaway Face (a.k.a. The Steel Hit - 1963) ***½
The Outfit (1963) **½
The Mourner (1963) **½
The Score (a.k.a. Killtown - 1964) ***½
The Jugger (a.k.a. Made in U.S.A. - 1965) ****
The Seventh (a.k.a. The Split - 1966) ****
The Handle (a.k.a. Run Lethal - 1966) **½
The Damsel (1967) *
The Rare Coin Score (1967) ***
The Green Eagle Score (1968) ***
The Dame (1969) **
The Black Ice Score (1968) **½
The Sour Lemon Score (1969) ****
Deadly Edge (1971) ***½
The Blackbird (1969) **
Slayground (1971) ****
Lemons Never Lie (1971) ***
Plunder Squad (1972) ***
Butcher’s Moon (1974) ****
Comeback (1997) ****
Backflash (1998) ****
Flashfire (2000) ***½
Firebreak (2001) ****
Breakout (2002) ***½
Nobody Runs Forever (2004) ****
Ask the Parrot (2006) ****
Dirty Money (2008) ***
(This is a revision of an article that first appeared in BadAzz MoFo #4, April 1999, p. 70)
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Book Ad of the Week: A COMPLETE STATE OF DEATH (1969)
A Complete State of Death
by John Gardner
The Viking Press, 1969
This novel became the Columbia Pictures release THE STONE KILLER (1973), directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson.
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