Black Gate

The Fall of the Roman Empire (USA, 1964)

Big-studio Hollywood historical epics had a good run, arguably starting with the films of Cecil B. DeMille in the Twenties, flourishing throughout the Fifties and peaking around 1960 with grand features like Ben-Hur (1959) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). But in the early Sixties the theater-going public seems to have lost their taste for big epics, right about the time those same epics began letting them down, either becoming unbearably ridiculous in their depictions of other cultures or bogged down in turgid self-importance. Actors like Charlton Heston, who’d made a career out of swaggering through ancient and medieval studio sets with a sword on his hip, gave historical epics one last go and then shrugged and reinvented themselves as Seventies action stars.

The Fall of the Roman Empire

Rating: **
Origin: USA, 1964
Director: Anthony Mann
Source: Genius Products DVD

A grand historical epic, from the producer and director who’d made El Cid (1961), starring Sophia Loren, Christopher Plummer, Alec Guinness, and James Mason, with cinematography by the great Robert Krasker and action scenes directed by Yakima Canutt, in the same late Roman setting as Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). What could go wrong?

…

Read More Read More

Today I’m trying to fit in with the cool kids. I usually have to sit by myself at the Mystery table. But this week, I pull my booster seat up to the Horror table. I love a good homage movie that is also funny. Something that’s more pastiche, than lowbrow parody. The best example I can think of is Galaxy Quest. It pokes fun at the science fiction mores and tropes, largely established by the original Star Trek television series. And it does it by delving deeply into the cult fandom which that show inspired. It has a tremendous cast and is lovingly hilarious. It’s clever funny; The British Office. Not dumb funny; Dumb and Dumber (which I find utterly stupid and unwatchable).

In the mystery field, it’s Without a Clue, which turns the Holmes story on its head. Ben Kingsley is the genius, crime-solving Doctor Watson, who hires the unemployed, drunkard actor, Reginald Kincaid, to play Holmes for public consumption. Watson feeds Holmes clues, solutions, lines, the works; and Michael Caine is utterly fantastic as the front man, the great Sherlock Holmes. It’s brilliant and hilarious. One of my five favorite Holmes movies.

Some would point to Army of Darkness as this type of movie in the horror field. It’s Bruce Campbell’s Evil Dead Light. I get it (and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. is my all time second-favorite TV show). For me, Tucker and Dale vs. EVIL is right there with Galaxy Quest, and Without a Clue.

This movie has all the pieces; a road  encounter with hillbillies; college kids in the woods; chainsaws and wood chippers; skinny-dipping coeds; a massacre at the same place twenty years before; bodies piling up one at a time: it’s all there. But it’s all turned upside down!

…

Read More Read More

In high school I read Beowulf on my own. It was from the Folio Society, illustrated by Virgil Burnett and translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland. Some years later I read John Gardner’s Grendel, a commentary on humanity and Jean-Paul Sartre more than on Beowulf itself. Eventually I came across Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, a mashup of the journal of Ahmad ibn Fadlan and Beowulf (and reviewed by me here). Since it’s been ages since I read the original poem, I thought I should give it a go and find something interesting to say. I’m struggling, but bear with me as I try.

Beowulf is a heroic tale set in 6th century Scandinavia. Scholars debate whether it existed first as an oral tale from pagan days, only to be written down in later Christian times, or if it is a mix of Germanic oral tradition and literate Anglo-Saxon poetry, or something else altogether. The sole extant version of it is written in Old English, the language of Anglo-Saxon England (people originally from Northern Germany and Southern Denmark), and preserved as part of the Nowell Codex, a manuscript written between the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th centuries. Several characters mentioned in Beowulf make appearances in other Nordic tales, particularly the Hrólfs saga kraka (The Saga of King Rolf Hraki. My review of Poul Anderson’s telling of the saga is here).

Here’s Wikipedia describing the technical aspects of the poem:

Anglo-Saxon poetry is constructed very differently from a modern poem. There is little use of rhyme and no fixed number of beats or syllables; the verse is alliterative, meaning that each line is in two halves, separated by a caesura, and linked by the presence of stressed syllables with similar sounds. The poet often used formulaic phrases for half-lines, including kennings, evocative poetic descriptions compressed into a single compound word.

Having neither Old English nor expertise in epic German or Anglo-Saxon poetry, I won’t weigh in on the matter of Beowulf‘s origin. Suffice to say it is a very old poem that not only recounts Beowulf’s exploits, but also provides partial histories of several Scandinavian royal households, describes battles, and gives an idea of life in ancient Scandinavia.

…

Read More Read More

And, we’re back!! Black Gate had some difficulties and was offline for last week’s regular spot, but the world is back to normal. Well, not really, but I’m here on Monday morning, anyways. I was really torn on what to write about for today’s column. Obviously, the final vote was in favor of The ABC Murders, starring John Malkovich. But it was a near thing. Recently, I watched the first couple episodes of Thunder in Paradise. That show, which is classic nineties Gorgonzola, was a tame version of the big budget action films of the era. Hulk Hogan and Chris Lemmon (Jack’s son) are ex-Navy Seals with a prototype speedboat that is a Kit-light (for you Knightrider fans). But that turned out to be an essay for another day.

So, it’s Amazon’s three-part take on the 1935 novel. It aired in 2018, and Malkovich was 63. Of course, he has always looked a bit old, and he conveys Poirot’s weariness quite well. This is a Poirot past-his-prime.

THERE BE SPOILERS– You can go watch this on Amazon. It’s not hard to find. I try to write no/low-spoiler essays, but sometimes you gotta say what you gotta say. If you’ve not seen this version, and don’t want any surprises (and there are a few), go watch it before reading on. – END SPOILER ALERT

…

Read More Read More

Last month I shared what I’ve been reading lately. Being the unoriginal guy that I am, I figured this week, it would be what I’ve been watching!

RELIC HUNTER

A decade after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (number three in the franchise), an Indy take-off show hit the airwaves. Now, many of you know Tia Carrere best as Akivasha, the evil sorceress in Kevin Sorbo’s Kull, which was reportedly to be the third Conan film starring Schwarzenegger (though there’s a different story about a third film: that’s fodder for another post). But Ah-nuld passed and instead we got a forgettable film with no relation to Robert E. Howard’s actual Kull character. I’m kidding! Not about the Conan/Kull stuff – that’s all true. But that’s not why you know Carrere, who was of course Cassandra in Wayne’s World; and she had a prominent part in Arnie’s True Lies.

For sixty-six episodes, covering three seasons, she was Sydney Fox, a Professor who traveled the globe, chasing down items of antiquity. Or, at least a couple decades old, anyways. Which is why the show is called Relic Hunter. She is assisted by Nigel, a dweeby assistant professor (played by Christien Anholt). Lindy Booth, who pops up in various productions (mostly made in Canada) is her useless, brainless, bimbo of an office assistant, foisted on her because her father is a donor to the school. Booth had two notable appearances in A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery.

…

Read More Read More

I’ve been taking advantage of listening to some audio books throughout the day – I only listen to unabridged versions, unless it’s a book I’ve read before, and know well enough that leaving parts out is okay. I don’t really care for abridgments – in addition to the usual reading. Helps the day pass faster, and lets me get to more things.

DORTMUNDER (Donald Westlake)

I think that Donald Westlake is one of those authors who is more respected than popular. He wrote a lot of good books, but he’s not generally well known. But people ‘who know’ like Westlake. I’m most a fan of his caper/heist books. I think he is to those what Ed McBain is to police procedurals.

Westlake can write over-the-top comedy, and understated funny. And he can mix the two in the same book. John Dortmunder appeared in fourteen books between 1970 and 2009, as well about a dozen short stories. Dortmunder is a pessimistic thief who continually runs into amusing (though not to him) obstacles. Exasperated, he continues forward, moving inexorably towards the next speed bump; or concrete wall in the road. The humor is not overtly screwball, but Dortmunder’s exasperation can be laugh out loud.

Dortmunder usually puts together a team, and the recurring characters add to the series. I love how Murch describes the route he is going to/did drive; even if it’s just coming from his house to a meeting. Dortmunder and group are after an emerald in the first book.

…

Read More Read More

You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I enjoy a good Western on the screen. Tombstone is my favorite, with Rio Bravo not too far behind. And I usually watch at least a little if it’s got Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea in it. So you know that Ride the High Country, with its breathtaking cinematography, is in the mix. And be it Maverick or Support Your Local Sheriff, I love seeing James Garner in a cowboy hat. I wrote about one of my favorite TV shows, Hell on Wheels.

But I’ve not read too many Westerns. Looking over the two-thousandish books on my shelves, I only see Steven Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series – which is in the Sherlock Holmes section, of course. And a fine collection of short stories by my second-favorite author, Robert E. Howard. And neither would be there solely based on their genre. I do have a few more Westerns in ebook format, which I’ve transitioned to over the past decade.

I’ve meant to write about T. T. Flynn’s Westerns. Flynn authored the Bail Bond Dodd stories, about a fairly tough, but not really hardboiled, bail bondsman, for Dime Detective. But I was smart enough to get Duane Spurlock to contribute a piece to A (Black) Gat in the Hand, which you can read here. Regular readers of that series (assuming there are any) know that Norbert Davis is on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore, second only to ‘Dash.’ So it’s not surprising I wrote an essay on his story “A Gunsmoke Case for Major Cain.” Another Davis Western post is likely somewhere down the dusty trail.

This past weekend, I decided to revisit a Western movie from 2008 which I had seen once before; but the plot details were fuzzy. So, kinda familiar, kinda new. What I did remember was that I thought it was pretty good. And a second view drove that home like a sod buster splitting a fence rail (okay, okay, no more of that. Too much, anyways).

A friend of mine with a long list of IMDB credits has said several times that Hollywood just doesn’t like big budget Westerns. And it’s true that we do get one of them occasionally, but they’re never billed as summer blockbusters. And heaven for-fend a franchise develop! Of course, television is more friendly to the genre.

…

Read More Read More