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Recent Posts
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- Mackenna’s Gold (1969): Gold, Ghosts and Frontier Violence
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Nothing but noir
Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
- 20th century Danny Boy
- American Pulps
- Bear Alley
- Bloody, Spicy, Books
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- Existential Ennui
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- Irv O. Neil's Erotica is My Trade
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Category Archives: Pulp fiction
Pulp Friday: The Riot
I am rather partial to a good paperback movie tie-in. And I love Pan paperbacks. So this book from 1969, which I had never previously seen before stumbling across it in a second hand bookshop this week, presses all the right buttons.
The Riot, the only novel credit I have been able to find for Frank Elli, was first published in 1966. It is the story of a cynical con who finds himself thrown into the centre of a brutal hostage situation when the prison he is incarcerated in, erupts in a riot. Apparently the novel was based on an actual riot in an Arizona prison in which Elli, a former inmate of the prison, had been involved in. Kirkus Review called it ‘powerful storytelling. It’s a brutal, black vision in which the cynical despair is offset by a cool, shrug shouldered presentation.’ That doesn’t sound too bad.
It was filmed as Riot in 1969 by Buzz Kulik, a director who appears to have spent most of his career doing television, starring Jim Brown in the main role, and Gene hackman. As was often the case with prison films in the 1960s and 1970s, the production utilised real life prison inmate and staff at the Yuma Territorial Prison that it was filmed in.… Read more
Nothing but one big shill
Okay, you best all be warned, the following post is one giant shill, mostly on behalf of yours truly.
I am flat out at the moment with the third year of my PhD, so I am finding it hard to make the time to post as much as I would like on my various cultural obsessions, film noir, crime fiction and pulp. That said I still have a lot going on.
First up, this coming Friday, May 4, from 7pm, I’ll be taking part in the first of what will be a series of free events run by my local bookstore, the wonderful Brunswick Bound, in which authors will be reading from the opening chapter of the their current work. This one has a crime theme and there’ll be four of us reading, including me doing a section from Gunshine State, which was re-released earlier this year by Down and Out Books. So, if you are inner Melbourne north way this Friday and feel like hearing some words and drinking some wine, drop on down, 361 Sydney Road Brunswick.
The second incarnation of Gunshine State has been getting a bit of love recently, the best of which is this review of the site of Canberra based blogger and writer, Tim Nappertime.… Read more
Posted in Asian noir, Australian crime fiction, Australian noir, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Gunshine State, Noir fiction, Pulp fiction, Pulp paperback cover art
Tagged 1950-1980, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, Brunswick Bound, Dancing Home, Down and Out Books, Girl Gangs, Gunshine State, Jock Serong, Paul Collis, The Rules of Backyard Cricket, Tim Nappertime
Pulp Friday: The Man With the Brown Paper Face
Welcome to my first Pulp Friday offering for 2018. Today’s book, The Man With the Brown Paper Face, published by Panther in 1969, showcases one of my favourite forms of paperback cover design, photographic cover art from the late 1960s/early 1970s.
I know the purists among you dig the painted pulp covers from the 1940s and 1950s, and I love them, too. But there is something wonderfully sensational and lurid about photographic cover design from the period I mentioned earlier and, in my opinion, the Brits were the masters of it.
Photographs began to replace artwork on paperback books from the mid-1960s on. Partly this was part of an effort by publishers to be seen to be moving with the times and look more modern. Partly it was a cost cutting measure, as photographic covers were cheaper than painted ones. But despite their cheapness, arguably because of it, many of these covers manage to evoke a dynamic, visceral, fly on the wall atmosphere that could often be quite stunning.
The Man With the Brown Paper Face is a good example. The cover utilises a man with a stocking over his head, posing on top of a scrapyard car, brandishing a star picket, which the photographer probably found nearby. Its nasty and direct and – I don’t know about you – but it instantly made me want to pick up the book.… Read more
Projection Booth podcast #352: Kiss Me Deadly
It was a joy and a thrill to join film scholar Kevin Heffernan and Mike White, host of the terrific Projection Booth podcast, for an episode of his show on what is probably my favourite film noir, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
Kiss Me Deadly is one of those films I watch every year or so and always find something new to appreciate about it. Talking with my two co-podcasters, I discovered even more to like about it. Issues canvassed during this podcast include:
Mike Hammer (and Mickey Spillane) as the personification of the crisis in post WWII masculinity, and the women in the film as examples of females who are fighting against the confines of their role in American society in the 1950s.
Pulp fiction.
The film’s popularity in France, particularly within surrealist circles for its depiction of the incoherence of everyday life and mass commercial culture.
The Cold War nuclear state, paranoia and surveillance.
THAT answering machine.
Jack Elam.
Ernest Laszlo’s sensational cinematography.
Los Angeles’ former Bunker Hill area as the 1940s/50s B-movie/noir outdoor film shooting location of choice.
The psychiatrist as an archetypal villain in 1940s/1950s American film.
Other fictional noir detective equivalents to Mike Hammer, including Harry Moseby in Arthur Penn’s 1975 film, Night Moves (okay that last part might of been just me).… Read more
Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Film Noir, Gene Hackman, Ian Fleming, Neo Noir, Pulp fiction, Robert Aldrich
Tagged A. I. Bezzerides, Albert Dekker, Arthur Penn, Bunker Hill, Cloris Leachman, Ernest Laszlo, Film noir, French Surrealism, Gaby Rogers, Jack Elam, Jack Lambert, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Marion Carr, Maxine Cooper, Mickey Spillane, Night Moves (1975), Ralph Meeker, Robert Aldrich, Strother Martin, The Projection Booth podcast
My top 10 crime reads of 2017
Late last year the German culture website, CulturMag, asked me to nominate my top 10 reads for 2017. My list is now live (and in English), along with contributions from a number of other individuals and can be seen in full here.
As usual, it is a mix of old and new fiction, as well as some of the non-fiction books I enjoyed. What were your top crime reads of 2017?… Read more
Posted in Australian crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Latin and Central America, Neo Noir, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Ted Lewis
Tagged Day In, Day Out, Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir, Grady Hendrix, Hector Aguilar Camin, Iain Ryan, Julie Szego, Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Paperbacks From Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction, Ted Lewis, The Jones Men, The Love of a Bad Man, The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Tales of Conspiracy Noir, The Student, The Tainted Trial of Farah Jama, Three Hours Past Midnight, Tony Knighton, Vern E Smith