Japanese Tie-in #1: AQUARIUS (a.k.a. STAGE FRIGHT)

by Michael Gingold

What’s a movie tie-in paperback collector to do when he’s acquired almost all the English-language books he’s been looking for, and the few that are left are proving maddeningly elusive? Start seeking out titles in other languages. Japan is an especially fertile source, and if you happen to have a Japanese bookstore in your city -- especially one with used stock -- you can unearth all kinds of unexpected oddities. The U.S. never saw a novelization of Spike Lee’s GIRL 6, but guess what I found on the shelves of Manhattan’s Book Off…

One of the very first I acquired, though, was via an on-line dealer. My collector’s focus is on horror titles, and when I saw that this particular seller had a Japanese tie-in for AQUARIUS, the Michele Soavi slasher film better known as STAGE FRIGHT, I did a bit of a double take, as tie-ins for Italian horror movies from any country outside of Italy itself are few and far between. I hadn’t really considered going after Japanese tie-ins before, in part because I simply can’t read the language; in certain cases, though, you can look at the pictures, and that proved to be the case with AQUARIUS.

Published in 1987 and credited to “Lew Cooper” (the pseudonym Luigi Montefiore, a.k.a. George Eastman, used as his screenwriting nom de plume on this movie), the 215-page book opens with eight pages of color photos from the film, including a few gory images I’ve never seen anywhere else. Interspersed throughout the text are many more black-and-white stills, a number of them also rarities. A number of the Japanese tie-ins for locally produced features that I’ve picked up since are similarly illustrated, but very few that adapt movies from other countries, making AQUARIUS a rare bird for Italian-horror enthusiasts. I have no idea how faithful the adaptation is, nor can I judge the quality of the writing, but the copious images make this one a highlight of any collection.

Sheckley, from 7 to 10

by Nathaniel Poggiali

Robert Sheckley’s short story “Seventh Victim” first appeared in an April 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, and imagined a future society where military wars were nonexistent because of a government-sponsored game that legalized murder. Players alternated the role of Hunter and Victim according to random assignment, with only Hunters knowing the identity of an opponent. Any player that survived five rounds as Hunter and five rounds as Victim was awarded membership to the Tens Club, a position of significant power and wealth. The central figure is Stanton Frelaine, a Manhattan manufacturer of the Hunt-employed body defense Protec-Suit (“Why not drop into the Protec-Store nearest you? Why not be safe?”). When Frelaine falls in love with his seventh assigned Victim, he mistakenly assumes the young woman shares his feelings and decides not to kill her. Bang.

In 1965 director/co-writer Elio Petri made LA DECIMA VITTIMA (THE 10TH VICTIM) as an adaptation -- Sheckley’s name appears under the film’s onscreen title -- but altered the original story, jettisoning characters and switching genders of Hunter and Victim. Superstars Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress were cast, leading roles written to accommodate their distinctive screen personas. Handsome, brooding Marcello Polletti finds himself targeted by an American, Caroline Meredith (Andress), the celebrity assassin on her tenth and final hunt. Harassed by a paranoid mistress and money-hungry wife, in the grips of ennui, Marcello considers a quick death... and falls in love with his Hunter.

In an essay written for Omni’s Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies (Doubleday, 1984), Sheckley was far from thrilled about the story’s transition to the screen. “‘A small ironic bourgeois comedy,” he writes, “was striving to become The 10th Victim, a fast-paced futuristic sex farce, and not quite succeeding” (125). He mentions several writers “labored mightily” on a script where character motivations are, at best, hazy: “Marcello convinces Caroline not to kill him, but instead to ... Actually we’re not sure what Marcello has in mind because he never tells us …” (126).

Oddly enough, in the essay Sheckley never tells us that he wrote a novel based on the film: The 10th Victim (Ballantine, 1965), the work of an author adapting someone else’s adaptation of his story.

Where the film’s satire focused primarily on commercialism and the media -- a sequence in which Marcello visits the Temple of Venus and Rome is Fellini-esque in its depiction of television advertisements, and characters are frequently using cameras and other surveillance equipment as if privacy carried little weight -- Sheckley’s irony finds much of its interest in the confusion caused by technology (Caroline’s colleagues and makeshift TV crew are bungling amateurs, unlike their counterparts in Petri’s film), but shares the film’s celebration of violence, e.g., a sequence where an enthusiastic crowd of New Yorkers observe the public execution of a man arrested for littering.

Sheckley’s approach to the comic possibilities of the screenplay (by Petri, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvioni and Ennio Flaiano) is, at times, dead-on; at times, wrongheaded. The author totally gets Marcello’s character and is able to convey the man’s boredom and indifference in humorous detail. But in shaping other players, Sheckley is less inspired, as with a Chinese bird’s nest salesman and would-be assassin who speaks in pidgin English.

Caroline is another problem. If Sheckley retains Marcello’s (somehow) charming self-pity, he makes Caroline unsympathetic and shifts focus from her during key scenes. In the Omni essay Sheckley writes that Caroline singlemindedly wants marriage from Marcello, and the female Hunter’s words and actions in the novel comically indicate as much. But Ursula Andress, however miscast, brings warmth to the role, and has an appropriate world-weariness that matches Marcello’s disillusionment. In the novel Caroline seems petty and narcissistic to the end, and since we’re never allowed to read her thoughts we don’t see much of a personality. Rather than depicting the scene in which Caroline tells Marcello that she loves him and proposes marriage, Sheckley has Caroline describe the encounter to her colleagues, further distancing us.

Elsewhere Sheckley simply ignores his heroine, as in a comical series of misunderstandings when Caroline and her crew attempt to monitor Marcello in the streets of Rome via radio. This chapter is presumably a creation of Sheckley’s, its comedy of manners similar to passages in the author’s other sci-fi works. In the film, through close-ups and dialogue, we get a sense that Caroline is intrigued observing Marcello; in Sheckley’s version she says little, leaving Martin, a power-obsessed TV executive, to hog the spotlight. Tellingly, Sheckley moves Caroline’s assassination of the Chinese salesman from a nightclub -- where the heroine performs an exotic dance to fool the Hunter -- to a pop art exhibition, where she pretends to be a wax dummy.

Sheckley often undermines the material, not only with Caroline, but with the way minor characters (many unseen in the film) provide commentary. These passages are almost self-referential. After Caroline kills the salesman using twin firearms concealed in her bra, Sheckley has one onlooker telling another that the assassination was “campy” (16). And when Sheckley first describes Marcello (following the protagonist’s dispatch of a Victim at an equestrian competition), he seems to suggest that Mastroianni’s star persona is the character, and essentially all that the filmgoing audience wants to see:

He had high, prominent cheekbones suggesting deep reserves of passion, the restrained smile of the natural skeptic, and the tawny, heavy-lidded eyes which spoke strongly of a streak of indolence in the man. These qualities were immediately apparent to several thousand people in the reviewing stands, and they commented on them with pungent wisdom. (24)

Following his Omni essay on THE 10TH VICTIM, Sheckley penned two more novels about the Hunt: Victim Prime (Signet, 1987) and Hunter/Victim (Signet, 1987), both paperback originals. In Victim Prime one of the characters references THE 10TH VICTIM specifically as “that old movie they made before the Hunt became legal” (71). The introduction shared by the sequels (“The Hunt: 1990-2150”) was added to The 10th Victim when Signet reissued the novelization.

Works Cited

Sheckley, Robert. “Seventh Victim.” Galaxy Science Fiction. Apr. 1953: 38-51. Print.

---. “’The Seventh Victim’ and The 10th Victim.” Omni’s Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies: The Future According to Science Fiction. Ed. Danny Peary. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. 124-126. Print.

---. The 10th Victim. New York: Signet, 1987. Print.

---. Victim Prime. New York: Signet, 1987. Print.

Book Ad of the Week: RASCAL (1963)

February 6, 1964

Rascal

by Sterling North

E.P. Dutton & Co., 1963

Sterling North's novel became the Walt Disney production RASCAL (1969) directed by Norman Tokar and starring Steve Forrest, Pamela Toll, Elsa Lanchester, Henry Jones, Bettye Ackerman, Jonathan Daly and John Fiedler, with Billy Mumy as the young Sterling North and Walter Pidgeon narrating as the older Sterling North.

Book Ad of the Week: TEN PLUS ONE (1963)

September 12, 1963

Ten Plus One

by Ed McBain

Simon & Schuster, 1963

The seventeenth novel in Ed McBain's popular 87th Precinct series became the Philippe Labro film SANS MOBILE APPARENT/WITHOUT APPARENT MOTIVE (1971), starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dominique Sanda, Stéphane Audran, Laura Antonelli and Jean-Pierre Marielle. It was released in the U.S. by 20th Century Fox dubbed, with a PG rating.

THE EXTERMINATOR by Peter McCurtin

Reviewed by Paul Talbot and Chris Poggiali

For his second feature film, director/writer James Glickenhaus created the low-budget, brutal vigilante thriller THE EXTERMINATOR (1980), which quickly became a hit with urban grindhouse patrons who were delighted with the skuzzy, twisted movie that went farther than most exploitation epics of the era. Shortly after the film was picked up for U.S. release by Avco Embassy Pictures, the distributor set up a novelization deal. The memorable newspaper ads advised patrons to “Read the Manor paperback original.”

Author Peter McCurtin followed the movie closely as he retold the story of Johnny Eastland, a Vietnam veteran who snaps after his best friend and army buddy is rendered a quadriplegic by the Bronx street gang the Ghetto Ghouls. Calling himself “The Exterminator,” Eastland turns vigilante and utilizes a flamethrower, a meat grinder, an electric carving knife, hungry rats, mercury-laced bullets, and an M-16 rifle to rid the city of numerous thugs (including the Ghetto Ghouls), mobsters, pedophiles, and one highly trained, mafia-employed attack dog. As the colorful back cover copy explains, “John Eastland uses a Smith & Wesson Combat Magnum with an eight-inch barrel. He drills out the tips of his slugs and loads them with mercury. Whey they hit a scumbag’s belly they blow up like a hand grenade. John calls that his rat load.” Meanwhile, the NYPD detective in charge of the Exterminator case, James Dalton, realizes he has a few things in common with the loner vigilante he’s out to bust, and unfortunately gets caught in the crossfire when the CIA meddles in his investigation.

McCurtin (not a pseudonym) was responsible for writing dozens of men’s adventure novels in the 1970s, including three vigilante-themed series -- The Marksman (published by Belmont Tower), The Sharpshooter (Leisure Books), and The Assassin (Dell) -- so this was no doubt a quick and easy paycheck for him. His 1970 novel Mafioso had been the basis for Fernando Di Leo’s THE BOSS (1973), a vicious Eurocrime movie starring Henry Silva and Richard Conte, but with THE EXTERMINATOR he was presented with the flipside experience: writing his own novel from someone else’s feature film. Because Glickenhaus’ screenplay is short on exposition and almost comically devoid of segues, McCurtin was left with plenty of room to expand and create backstory, alter existing situations, and even toss in a few additional supporting characters with their own plot tangents.

For example, in the movie it’s never explained where Eastland gets the flamethrower, machine guns and other weaponry; the viewer just assumes that, like so many other veterans, he brought it all back with him after the war. In the novel, McCurtin points out that Eastland is unlike other veterans because he doesn’t have automatic weapons mothballed in his apartment. The reader is then taken on an eight-page tangent in which Eastland rips off Fordham Road pawnshop owner Shecky Brill, who is something of a legend thanks to his 40-year sideline career as an illegal gun dealer whose customers have included Israel, the IRA, and Dutch Schultz! Eastland walks out of Shecky’s warehouse with M-16’s, S&W .44’s, Schmeissers, commando knives and plenty of ammo.

In the movie, to learn the location of the Ghetto Ghouls’ clubhouse, Eastland uses a blow torch to menace gang member Frankie (Dennis Boutsikaris), leading to the first instance of the Exterminator’s catchphrase, “If you’re lying, I’ll be back.” Frankie survives the scene but is later killed by Eastland after mugging an elderly woman in the park. For the novel, McCurtin plays the blow torch interrogation the same way, but replaces Frankie with a Puerto Rican punk named Vinny, who Eastland guts with a commando knife after learning the whereabouts of the Ghouls hangout. The gang member shot by Eastland after the park mugging is never given a name, so there is no Frankie in the novel.

There’s no catchphrase either, because McCurtin also changes the second scene in which Eastland tells someone, “If you’re lying, I’ll be back.” Perhaps the most crowd-pleasing moment in the movie -- Gino Pontivini being lowered into a large meat grinder and chopped into chuck -- is completely deflated in the novel by having the mobster already dead of a heart attack when the bloodied and furious Eastland returns from his encounter with Pontivini’s security Doberman. If there was a point to this particular revision, it was lost on us.

Otherwise, McCurtin’s pulpy prose perfectly captures the movie’s cynical, downbeat tone. Choice passages include, “There was a fountain of arterial blood and the head fell and bounced” and “Spit was mixed with blood and a pink, frothy bubble formed between his lips and bobbed there for a moment before it broke.” Containing 16 pages of color publicity stills, the novelization of THE EXTERMINATOR is a compelling read and a highly-prized collectible worth seeking out, even for longtime fans who have the film memorized.

Back to Blaise: Peter O’Donnell’s Celluloid Heroine

"There came a time when fear was transmuted into stimulus, and the moments of danger which had once brought terror now brought only a keener sense of being alive."

                                                                                                       -- Modesty Blaise, Peter O'Donnell

Review by Nathaniel Poggiali

Modesty Blaise: striking, sophisticated, and lethal, she retired as head of a criminal organization with her devoted right-hand Willie Garvin; wealthy and bored, the two freelance for Sir Gerald Tarrant of Special Intelligence, accepting only the most dangerous assignments. Modesty and Willie made their first appearance on the comic pages of the London Evening Standard in May 1963, and proved so popular that their creator, Peter O’Donnell, continued to feature them in stories for 38 years. Though the comics continued over several decades, a related book series was just as important in keeping the characters alive. O’Donnell’s debut novel, Modesty Blaise (1965; Souvenir Press), was based on a story for an unsuccessful action spoof directed by Joseph Losey.

Within a year of the comic’s premiere, O’Donnell was approached about turning the strips into a film. He completed a screenplay using elements from a pair of stories published in the Standard, “La Machine” and “The Gabriel Set-Up." The film that resulted bears little resemblance to his work. In an interview for Comic Media, O’Donnell claimed that his writing had been altered “first by an Englishman, then by an Italian lady (in Italian)... translated back into English... rewritten by a West Indian, and finally polished off by an American” (8). The film in its released form (with Evan Jones credited as screenwriter) retains the basic story but adds bizarre, unfunny sight gags -- Modesty’s inexplicable changes in costume, for one -- and, according to O’Donnell, only uses three lines of his original dialogue (8). Not surprisingly, the author rewrote his story as a novel.

Like the film, the novel’s villain is Gabriel, a sociopathic criminal mastermind plotting to hijack a government shipment of diamonds en route to an oil sheik in Lebanon. Accompanying him are the obnoxious hired gun McWhirter and butch Mrs. Fothergill, who is introduced gleefully breaking the neck of a British agent. Modesty, at Tarrant’s request for assistance, stages a falling-out with Willie on the French Riviera to mislead their targets, then uses herself as bait to gain access to Gabriel’s ship. The hijack goes as planned but at the hideout, an island monastery somewhere in the Mediterranean, Modesty and Willie plot their escape with the diamonds.

Losey’s film was only superficially faithful to its source, and O’Donnell’s novel, with its warm, complex characters, exciting action scenes, and lack of camp, is far superior. The heart of the book’s success comes from Modesty and Willie’s chemistry, an unusual (platonic) relationship that transcends the genre’s contrived plotting. Noble and wise but tainted by experience, Modesty and Willie are two of the smartest and most credible of adventure series protagonists.

O’Donnell wrote fight scenes in vivid, thrilling detail, capturing the fear and adrenaline rush experienced by his characters. A brutal match between Modesty and Mrs. Fothergill was not properly staged for the film and featured two actors (Monica Vitti and Rossella Falk) who were out of their element, but in the novel we get a strong depiction of every strike and parry.

The villains are also distinctive, and Gabriel has many chillingly memorable moments. First appearing in comic strip form in “The Gabriel Set-Up” (he would return for “The Head Girls” and the fourth Modesty novel, A Taste for Death), Gabriel’s businesslike approach to torture and murder, his casual brutality, an obsession with Tom & Jerry cartoons - the man is unsettling to the point that we fear for his enemies. It’s too bad Losey had Dirk Bogarde, a wonderful actor not well served by the material, playing him for laughs.

Speaking for Comic Media, O’Donnell claimed that as part of the contract between Beaverbrook Newspapers, owner of the Standard, and the film’s producers, the “essential characteristics” of Modesty and Willie could not be altered. Therefore, some of the more outlandish ideas proposed by other writers never made it to the screen. One written scene O’Donnell objected to -- and had removed -- was an opening credit montage that featured Modesty cold-bloodedly murdering a succession of enemy agents (one has his throat removed with steel talons). Sadly, the author could not block Losey’s campy, condescending approach, a fatal miscasting of the great Monica Vitti, and some ridiculous musical numbers.

Far more faithful is DC Comics’ superb 1994 adaptation, written by O’Donnell with illustrations by Dick Giordano. There are minor differences and dialogue has been simplified, but generally this is closer to what was intended for the big screen. The characters are drawn to resemble the work of original penciller Jim Holdaway and successor Enric Badia Romero, neatly placing the graphic novel into a kind of continuity with the strips (sleepy-eyed Gabriel, in particular, seems to have emerged from Holdaway’s sketches). And Giordano has fun in the panels, whether recreating a Road Runner short to illustrate the villains’ entertainment break, or amusingly playing up differences in height between the irascible Fothergill and taunting McWhirter. A remarkable achievement, the graphic novel is a must for fans. It’s a shame that DC Comics could not move enough copies to justify adaptations of the remaining books.

References

O’Donnell, Peter. Interview. Comic Media 2.2 (Jan. 1973): 4-16.

---. Modesty Blaise. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965.

Book Ad of the Week: CITY PRIMEVAL

September 19, 1980

City Primeval

by Elmore Leonard

Arbor House, 1980

A number of films have been made from Elmore Leonard's novels and short stories, beginning with THE TALL T and 3:10 TO YUMA in 1957, but the major motion picture based on City Primeval has yet to be produced. However, lead character Raymond Cruz makes an appearance in another Leonard novel, Out of Sight, and is played by Paul Calderon in Steven Soderbergh's 1998 film adaptation.