Tag Archives: Sun Books

Pulp Friday: Patrick

Posted on April 21, 2017 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Patrick #1I am partial to a good paperback movie tie-in and this week’s Pulp Curry features a beauty, Patrick, which I found in an excellent second hand book shop during recent travels in rural Victoria.

Published by Sun Books in 1978, the novel is based on the original screenplay by Everett de Roche of the influential Ozploitation film of the same name about man in a coma after murdering his mother and her lover by electrocuting them in a bath. The man, Patrick (Robert Thomspon), who strange psychokinetic powers, falls in love with his nurse, Kathy (Susan Penhaligon) communicating with her via an electric typewriter. He also uses his powers to ward off other potential male suiters in Kathy’s life and battle the hospital staff, particularly the Nurse Ratched-like Matron, Cassidy (Julia Blake).

The book was written Australian writer Keith Hetherington, who we have featured previously on this site. Hetherington, who was born in 1929 and I believe is still alive, had a long career, including writing Westerns and Larry Kent crime thrillers for Cleveland Publishing, fiction for Man and Pocket Man magazine, radio plays, television scripts, and various stand alone thrillers and a paperback tie ins for films such as Snapshot (1979) and The Chain Reaction (1980).

I love the cover for this paperback tie in, Robert Thompson aka Patrick’s creepy, penetrating eyes, although the copy I have, from which the front and back cover scan is taken, is slightly askew, the product of a printing fault.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Horror, Ozsploitation, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Science fiction and fantasy

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Pulp Friday: Journey Among Women

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

“Savagery and passion amongst the wild women convicts of early Australia.”

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is Journey Among Women by Diana Fuller, published by Sun Books in 1977.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about out of print classic Australian books. Journey Among Women has long been unavailable and details about its author are also thin on the ground.

That the book lives on at all in our cultural memory is only due to the cult following of the movie version, released in 1977, scripted by Fuller and directed by Tom Cowan. Unlike the book, the film is available, although it’s not easy to get.

Set among the brutal colonial beginnings of Australia, the story centres on the daughter of a judge who runs away with a group of hard core female convicts. They establish a women’s only society in the remote bush, successfully defending themselves from the wild men who dwell there and the colonial police and soldiers trying to capture them.

Journey Among Women is apparently based on a true story, the escape of a group of female convicts from a NSW Paramatta stockade in our early colonial days. Shot on a small budget, the movie was by all accounts incredibly controversial due to its graphic violence, overt lesbianism and explicit nudity.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Ozsploitation, Pulp Friday, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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