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Saturday, July 16, 2005Assignment Ankara
After a severe earthquake devestates much of Turkey, the United States government loses contact with a remote mountain outpost that was busy keeping tabs on a secret Russian project just over the border. The earthquake couldn't have hit at a worse time, as the folks up at the outpost seem to have discovered something extremely important. Special agent Sam Durell is gievn a simple mission: get to the base, find out if anyone is alive, and return with the tapes containing the reconnaissance info. One agent has already disappeared trying to pull off the same mission.
Helping Sam along the way is a gruff Turkish military officer. Since much of the country's infrastructure was wiped out by the quake, there is no easy route to the base, and the Turkish government can't provide Sam much assistance, what with them being busy trying to salvage their wrecked country and all. Since this is a spy novel from the 1960s, it's not too many pages before Durell runs into a beautiful woman who is, predictably enough, much more than she appears to be. And it's just a few more pages before Durell and his small band run into two more people, a crazy-ass missionary and his sexy daughter. Once again, it's a spy novel, so noen of them are what they appear to be. The missionary, who is pretending to smuggle priceless artifacts out of the country is actually smuggling dope, and his daughter isn't even his daughter. She's just along for the ride, hoping to get the hell out of the country where she'd goen to find fame and fortune and instead found herself part of the white slave trade. Just in case the whole gang of deceitful people with their own secret agendas wasn't enough crap for Sam to deal with, Mother Nature decides to through in frequent aftershocks, flooding, landslides, and other things the average person has to deal with in a day at the office. Durell and his rag tag band of followers make it to a village where they can rest up, make plans, spy on each other, and generally act suspicious. Sam hikes up to the base to find what officials had feared: the place is an absolute wreck. Most of the soldiers manning the outpost were killed during the quake, and the guy in command is an incompetent desk jockey who was just there for an inspection. He can't handle anything, and spends most of his command getting drunk and bossing people around in the most absurd ways. The only person with half a brain left in their head is some grunt who informs Durell that the tapes he's looking for left the base with a professor and headed down the mountain to the town. Hmm, guess Sam should have checked that out before he made the hike! Back down in the village, Sam locates the professor among the wounded, and does so at precisely the moment the professor is getting murdered. The guy just never gets a break. Things pretty much go nonstop from here as Sam finds then loses the tapes, runs into the missing agent, and tries to find out who among those in his party is working with the Russians to make sure the tapes are destroyed. It all ends up with them on a doomed flight over the ocean and a final showdown with the Commie agents aboard a Russian fishing boat. Assignment Ankara is a damn fun book. It has almost no sleaze or sex in it, though there is a little just to keep things moving along. The entire thing is pretty much nonstop action and espionage that is smartly written and keeps you guessing as to who the traitors are. I like the Sam Durell novels because they concentrate less on sex and more on action and intrigue, making them a welcome breath of fresh air in a genre that is very often paint-by-numbers. Sam is an interesting character who tends to screw up and depend on luck less than his fellow greatest spies in the world. The story is well-constructed and, like I said, keeps you guessing with lots of false clues. Most of the characters, while not the deepest literary creations ever to parade across the page, are engaging and well done within the limits of the genre in which they exist. If you are looking for the sleaze of a Nick Carter book, you're out of luck. But if you want a ton of well-paced and well-plotted action, you really can't go wrong with this book or just about any other Sam Durell novel. Labels: Espionage posted by Keith at 9:30 PM | 0 Comments Tuesday, July 05, 2005Mental Hygiene
By Ken Smith. 1999, Blast Books.
Readers of a certain age will remember the excitement of walking into a classroom and seeing the film projector set up. Whether viewing a film on the horrors of drugs and alcohol, the spreading of cold germs, or how to apply for a job, students were promised at least 10 minutes of diversion from the boring classroom. Teachers liked the films as well because they provided them with 10 minutes to hang out in the faculty lounge. Today, most of these short films are used as a source of campy laughs, or in commercials as a contrast to today's "extreme" roller blading kids. In Mental Hygiene, Ken Smith takes a different view of these often-ignored films. Smith, the author of Roadside America, takes a rather straightforward approach to these films that were designed to influence the behavior of a generation of children. Thousands of these films were produced from 1945 to 1970. Rigidly defining right and wrong, there is no room for shades of gray in these films. Millions of children viewed these films, as they circulated throughout schools for years. Although most of these films were out of circulation by the mid-seventies, I remember watching a movie in high school around 1987 where a crew-cut wearing "social scientist" explained how "thousands of schoolchildren spend each weekend getting stoned on beer." Mostly made in the Midwest, these films capitalized on postwar fears about teens and their new freedoms. World War II training films showed that film could be an effective teaching tool, and progressive educators embraced the idea. Many of the films had open endings ("What would your class do?") and were designed for classroom discussion afterwards. One thing that tends to be forgotten today is that these were idealized pictures of America. The kids were square, but that was the point. These were views of a society as it should be, not necessarily the way it was, in the hopes that children would imitate the images on screen and not turn into goofball-selling punks. As evidenced by their behavior in the sixties and early seventies, the lessons didn't always take. These films strongly emphasized fitting in and conforming to society's norms as a solution to your problems. While this may seem alien to contemporary viewers, the people behind these films were mostly servicemen who had experienced the virtues of fitting in and "being a team player" on the battlefield. Smith explores these films by genre and producers, uncovering the fascinating stories behind the films' birth. The producers of these films were a varied lot, mainly ex-servicemen and businessmen who had been bitten by the movie bug. Classroom films were made quickly and cheaply and guaranteed an audience. Coronet, the gold standard of mental hygiene films, churned out a film every 4.2 days. David Smart, the founder of Coronet was the super-suave publisher of GQ and Esquire. How suave was he? Well, Smart was the owner of an early Matt Helm like motorized round bed, in the thirties. Coronet films were more like "real" movies than other films, and are the ones that showed up most frequently on Mystery Science Theater and compilation tapes. While most of the films demonstrated how fitting in and following the rules would make you happier and healthier, a number of them took the "let's scare the crap out of the little punks" approach. In these films, children who drove recklessly, took drugs or horsed around during shop class would be blinded or jailed if they were lucky, with an unsympathetic narrator intoning something like, "Well, how do you feel now?" Danger was around every corner, and even your own home wasn't safe, what with all those exposed wires and fire hazards. Sid King was a master of this genre, tackling subjects such as drug abuse and child molesters. King's harsh looking films usually had a stern narrator who knew all about teenaged "wise guys." This genre also included the driving films featuring the grisly aftermaths of traffic accidents. After just reading the descriptions, I'm surprised these didn't result in a nation of children who would rather take the bus or walk. Smith rounds out the book with capsule synopsis of about 300 films. Since a large portion of these films are damaged, destroyed or unavailable to the general public, this might be the only place to learn about a young Frank Sinatra teaching racial and religious tolerance while calling kids "first class fatheads." Labels: Film Studies posted by Keith at 3:51 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, July 03, 2005Mondo Macabro
By Peter Tombs. 1998, St. Martins Press.
That right there tells you you're getting something mighty special, and in the case of this book, you can judge it by the cover. Peter Tombs, co-author of the wonderful Eurosleaze film book Immoral Tales, is back in full effect with this book exploring the weirdest films from around the world. Tombs' book promises us the weird, wonderful, and obscure, and delivers in frustrating quantity (frustrating because, if you are like me, each page turns you on to a difficult-to-find treasure that will obsess you for months). Some books on cult films promise you the zany stuff and then deliver yet another chapter on The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Friday the 13th. Tombs thumbs his nose at run-of-the-mill nonsense and goes for the real mind-blowing stuff. Crazy films from Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, The Philippines, Bali, India, Mexico, and Turkey (among others) are covered, and Tombs turns up some of the most priceless gems I've ever seen. Bruce Lee Versus Gay Power?!?! From Brazil? Do you know how obsessed I am with finding this film now? A Turkish rip-off of Star Trek, complete with a Spock look-alike? Hindi disco/monster films? I was pretty familiar with the Hong Kong and Japan material, so that was of less interest to me, but the rest of the book is phenomenal, an essential resource for anyone tired of the same old crap in your video store's "Cult Classics" section. I've seen Pink Flamingos already. Bring on the Turkish sex and horror films! Tombs writes with frightening knowledge about the most bizarre stuff from the four corners of the globe, and his writing is in a style that is both fun and informative. It's rare that a film book is actually entertainingly written, but Tombs words are almost as much fun as the films about which they were scrawled. Dozens and dozens of pictures, some in glossy full color, adorn the pages. That way, you can ogle those sexy Turkish women (and they are sexy), Mexican masked wrestlers, Japanese bondage queens, and heroic Indian lads battling zombies in the disco. I will issue a serious warning: you cannot buy this book and not become obsessed with its contents. You cannot leaf through this book and not find yourself suddenly launched on a quest to find a copy of Cheekh. You will be crushed and frustrated as you desperately strive to track down copies of these films. You will loose sleep wondering how you will ever get a hold of Cleopatra Wong. Even if you are a seasoned veteran of the obscure film trenches, this book is going to turn you onto a whole new world. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see just how crazy the world is. Labels: Film Studies posted by Keith at 3:58 PM | 0 Comments Friday, July 01, 2005Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci
By Stephen Thrower. 1999, Fab Press.
Beyond Terror is a massive coffee table book, or a really big shelf book if you don't have a coffee table (it's too big to stack on the back of the toilet, unfortunately), covering the life and works of one of the most influential, and certainly one of the most controversial directors in Italian film history: Lucio Fulci. Known to fans as the "godfather of gore," Fulci pushed the envelope of what was and was not acceptable gore and violence in a film. Movies like Zombie, The Beyond, and City of the Living Dead reveled in the grotesque, filling themselves with gut munching, eye gouging, intestine barfing, and more bloody mayhem than most people care to see in a lifetime of films. But for people who are really fans of Fulci, something else lies beneath, and that something else is captured beautifully in this book. Fulci was a rebel, a system bucker who would intentionally go out and do the things he was told he could not do. His position as an iconoclastic renegade cost him much money and more than a few business associates and friends, but the passion is undeniable. It's great to finally read a book that deals with Fulci's work on more than a "gee whiz" gorehound level. Beyond Terror provides the reader with a complete filmography, technical notes, and reviews of each film. It also delves deeper into many movies, exploring the surrealism, the visions and goals of what Fulci wanted to capture on and do with film. Sometimes he succeeded, other times he didn't. We tend to knock Fulci around a tad, but it's all in good fun, and despite whatever critical comments I may make about his films, the fact remains that, by and large, I love his movies. Attention is paid to Fulci's non-horror films as well, giving a much better view of the man and his career than has previously ever been available. For people like me who are fans of some of his non-horror films, it was a real treat to get more information on them. Stephen Thrower's book is well-written, consistently informative, and unlike many looks at cult films and cult film figures, relatively free of glaring factual errors and omissions. You can tell the man is a huge fan of Fulci films, but you can also tell that he's well-read, did his research, and intended his book to work on a professional level. It does. As if all the info wasn't enough to keep me and people like me drooling for weeks on end, the book is illustrated with dozens upon dozens of photographs in color and black and white. In a sentence, Beyond Terror is essential reading for Fulci fans, and should also be of great interest to fans of horror and fantasy films in general. And if you are simply looking for a good book about a true pioneering spirit in film, you might not mind it either. I thought the entire thing was superb. My only complaint is the binding: a book that is read and reread and referenced this much tends to fall apart if the binding isn't up to the task. Still, a minor flaw in what is a grand achievement. Labels: Film Studies posted by Keith at 3:30 PM | 0 Comments |
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