Search
-
Recent Posts
- Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980, now available for pre-order
- 2019 mid-summer reading report back
- Playing dirty: war as a criminal enterprise
- My top 10 reads of 2018
- Interview with Iain McIntyre, author of On the Fly! Hobo Literature & Songs, 1879-1941
- ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy’: In praise of Where Eagles Dare
- Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria
- Pulp Friday: a celebration of Tandem Books covers
- Joint launch of new cinema books on Rollerball and The Fly, Sunday, November 4
- The pulp magazines under the floorboards
Categories
- 1990s American crime films
- 60s American crime films
- 70s American crime films
- 80s American crime films
- Adrian McKinty
- Albert Dekker
- Andre De Toth
- Angela Savage
- Angie Dickinson
- Anthony Zerbe
- Asian noir
- Australian crime fiction
- Australian crime film
- Australian noir
- Australian popular culture
- Australian pulp fiction
- Australian television history
- Ava Gardner
- Beat culture
- Belmont Tower Books
- Bill Hunter
- Blaxsploitation
- Book cover design
- Book Reviews
- British crime cinema
- British pulp fiction
- Bryan Brown
- Burt Lancaster
- Carter Brown
- Charles Durning
- Charles Willeford
- Chester Himes
- Christopher G Moore
- Christopher Lee
- Coronet Books
- Crawford Productions
- Crime Factory
- Crime Factory Publications
- Crime fiction
- Crime fiction and film from Africa
- Crime fiction and film from Cambodia
- Crime fiction and film from China
- Crime fiction and film from India
- Crime fiction and film from Indonesia
- Crime fiction and film from Japan
- Crime fiction and film from Laos
- Crime fiction and film from Malaysia
- Crime fiction and film from Mexico
- Crime fiction and film from Scandinavia
- Crime fiction and film from Singapore
- Crime fiction and film from South Korea
- Crime fiction and film from Thailand
- Crime fiction and film from the Philippines
- Crime Fiction and film set in Vietnam
- Crime film
- David Goodis
- David Peace
- David Whish-Wilson
- Dennis Wheatley
- Derek Raymond
- Don Siegel
- Don Winslow
- Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark
- Dystopian cinema
- Emerging Writers' Festival
- Ernest Borgnine
- Eurocrime
- Fawcett Gold Medal Books
- Femme fatale
- Fernando Di Leo
- Filipino genre films
- Film Noir
- Forgotten Melbourne
- Garry Disher
- Gene Hackman
- George V Higgins
- Ghost Money
- Giallo cinema
- Gil Brewer
- Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980
- Gloria Grahame
- Gold Star Publications
- Gunshine State
- Heist films
- Horror
- Horwitz Publications
- Humphrey Bogart
- Ian Fleming
- Interviews
- James Caan
- James Crumley
- James Ellroy
- James Woods
- Jim Brown
- Jim Thompson
- Jo Nesbo
- Joel Edgerton
- Joseph Losey
- Kerry Greenwood
- Kinji Fukasaku
- Larry Kent
- Lee Marvin
- Leigh Redhead
- Lindy Cameron
- M Emmet Walsh
- Mad Max
- Mafia
- Malla Nunn
- Martin Limon
- Megan Abbott
- Melbourne International Film Festival
- Melbourne Writers Festival
- Men's Pulp Magazines
- Michael Caine
- Michael Fassbender
- Monarch Books
- Ned Kelly Awards
- Neo Noir
- New English Library
- Newton Thornburg
- Noir Con
- Noir fiction
- Non-crime reviews
- Oren Moverman
- Ozsploitation
- Pan Books
- Parker
- Paul Newman
- Peter Boyle
- Peter Corris
- Peter Strickland
- Pulp fiction
- Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s
- Pulp fiction set in Asia
- Pulp Friday
- Pulp paperback cover art
- Qui Xiaolong
- Raymond Chandler
- Red Eagle (Insee Daeng)
- Richard Conte
- Robert Aldrich
- Robert Mitchum
- Robert Ryan
- Robert Stone
- Roger Smith
- Rollerball
- Roy Scheider
- Rural noir
- Sam Hawken
- Samuel Fuller
- Science fiction and fantasy
- Scripts Publications
- Simon Harvester
- Snowtown
- Snubnose Press
- Spies
- Stanley Baker
- Sterling Hayden
- Steve McQueen
- Stuart Rosenberg
- Sydney Lumet
- Tandem Books
- Tart noir
- Tartan Noir
- Ted Lewis
- Toni Johnson Woods
- True crime
- Vicki Hendricks
- Victor Mature
- Vintage mug shots
- Vintage pulp paperback covers
- Wallace Stroby
- War film
- Westerns
- Woody Strode
- Yakuza films
- Yaphet Kotto
Nothing but noir
Recommended reading
- Angela Savage
- Bitter Tea & Mystery
- Celluloidwickerman
- Cinebeats
- Cinema Retro
- Confessions of a Mystery Novelist
- Dead End Follies
- Detectives Beyond Borders
- MidCenturyCinema
- Rupert Pupkin Speaks
- The Cultural Gutter
- The Last Drive In
- The Passing Tramp
- The Rap Sheet
- Thrilling Detective
- Unlawful Acts
- We Are the Mutants
The lurid world of pulp
- Bear Alley
- Comics Down Under
- Existential Ennui
- Killer Covers
- Lost Classics of Teen Lit 1939-1989
- Men's Pulp Mags
- Mporcius Fiction Log
- Paperback Warrior
- Pop Sensation
- Pulp Covers
- Pulp Crazy
- Pulp International
- Realms of the Night
- Rough Edges
- Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
- Sin Street Sleaze
- Spy Guys and Gals
- Temple of Schlock
- The Dusty Bookcase
- The Moon Lens
- The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog
- The Paperback Film Projector
- The Pulp & Paperback Fiction Reader
- Too Much Horror Fiction
- Treasures and Musings @ Modern Graphic History Library
- Vault of Horror
- Vintage Romance Novels
- Yellow and Creased
Tag Archives: Richard Burton
‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy’: In praise of Where Eagles Dare
Like a quick and dirty mission behind enemy lines, last weekend I polished off Geoff Dyer’s love letter to the 1968 war thriller, Where Eagles Dare, ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’.
It is a strange little essay. Not really a monograph, because it tells you very little about the making and impact of the film, the things a monograph usually does, and more an extended meditation on why it is such a great action film and the culture milieu into which it was born. A milieu that Dyer grew up in and which was pretty similar for a boy in Australia in the 1970s when I was growing up.
One of my favourite things about Dywer’s essay was the various cultural associations and memories it aroused. The war had only been over for a quarter of a century and, looking back then, it still felt strangely present, like it was not quite ‘history’ in the way it is now; war films were big business and our parents unselfconsciously took us, often at a very young age, to see them; newsagents were full of those graphic Sven Hassel paperbacks; we lived on British comics that were full of German soldiers barking basic English; and, the must have toy was a GI Joe, who amongst his many uniforms, could be dressed as a German soldier.… Read more
Bob Hoskins and The Long Good Friday
A couple of years ago I had a lengthy exchange on social media with a British crime writer on the subject of what was the best crime film to come out of the UK, Get Carter (1971) or The Long Good Friday, released in 1980.
I have to fess up that at the time I took exception to his claim Get Carter had aged badly and The Long Good Friday was the superior piece of cinema, but he was right and I was wrong. I was reminded about this last week, when I heard the star of the Long Good Friday, Bob Hoskins, had died at the age of 71.
Get Carter and The Long Good Friday are both good films, especially in comparison to the slew of movies riffing on London’s underworld past that followed in the wake of Guy Richie’s rather middling effort, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
The Long Good Friday is the story of working class gangster made good, Harold Shand, whose criminal empire starts to unravel, for reasons he is totally unclear about, over a bank holiday long weekend.
Hoskins owns this film from the first moment we see him, walking down a concourse in Heathrow Airport, having just returned from business overseas, the eighties soundtrack pounding in the background.… Read more
Richard Burton and the face of a Villain
Richard Burton has been on my mind ever since I watched him a couple of weeks ago in the strange 1971 British film, Villain.
Burton was a regular fixture on the TV screen in our house when I was young. Like a lot of women of her generation, my mother loved him ever since he played Mark Anthony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 classic, Cleopatra (the film on which the two met for the first time).
Dad liked his war films, of which there were a few, including Where Eagles Dare (1968), Raid on Rommel (1971), The Wild Geese (1978) and The Longest Day (1962). Burton only had a very brief role in the later, as an RAF pilot shot down over Normandy. A US marine cut off from his outfit stumbles across him lying in the bushes next to a dead German soldier, and Burton gets to utter the immortal line: “He’s dead. I’m crippled. You’re lost. Do you suppose it’s always like that? I mean war.”
Only recently have I come to discover and appreciate some Burton’s other films. His turn as Alec Leamas in the incredibly bleak and noirish 1965 spy thriller, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold still stands as the best and most realistic screen depiction of the Cold War.… Read more
Posted in British crime cinema, Crime film, Heist films, Lee Marvin
Tagged 1974, Elizabeth Taylor, Ian McShane, Nigel Davenport, Peter Glenville, Raid on Rommel (1971), Richard Burton, Ronnie Cray, The Comedians (1967), The Klansman, The Longest Day (1962), The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), The Wild Geese (1978), Villain (1971), Where Eagles Dare (1968)