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Category Archives: Non-crime reviews
Rosaleen Norton ‘The Witch of Kings Cross’

I was familiar with the name Rosaleen Norton long before I watched Sonia Bible’s excellent documentary about her, which takes as its title Norton’s long running nickname, The Witch of Kings Cross.
In an attempt to cash in on the upsurge of public interest in the occult that occurred throughout the west in the 1960s, the long defunct Sydney pulp publisher Horwitz Publications put together a number of salacious tabloid style non-fiction books on the so-called rise of witchcraft and Satanism in Australia. My favourite of these, which I wrote about on this site some years ago, the 1965 book Kings Cross Black Magic, was a direct attempt to piggyback on Norton’s fame.
Norton was also a semi-regular presence in the bachelor and barbershop magazines that proliferated on the shelves of Australia’s newsagents in the 1960s, titles like Adam, Man, Pix and Australasian Post. These magazines, incredibly tame by today’s standards, were once seen as very risqué. The activities of Norton slotted in well with their steady diet of stories about UFO sightings, white slavery, heroic Anzacs, shark hunting and out of control teens.
So great was interest in the occult in mid-1960s Australia that the subject even featured in a 1965 episode of the high rating locally produced Crawford TV crime show, Homicide.… Read more
Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian television history, Crawford Productions, Horror, Horwitz Publications, Non-crime reviews, Pulp fiction, Rosaleen Norton, Scripts Publications
Tagged Australian occult, Crawford Productions, Gavin Greenless, Horwitz Publications, John Martensen, Kings Cross Black Magic, Rosaleen Norton, Sir Eugene Goossens, Sonia Bible, Sonia Borg, The Witch of Kings Cross, The Witch of Kings Cross (2020)
John le Carre, my 2020 and The Looking Glass War

It is fitting that my last post on this site for 2020 is a short tribute to the passing of a writer who has given me an enormous amount of pleasure during this difficult year, David John Moore Cornwell or as he is better known, John le Carré. Since his death on December 12, a sea of ink has been spilt on le Carré’s influence on the spy novel and his undoubted merits as a writer. I don’t intend to go over this territory again. Instead, I want to briefly discuss what it is about his George Smiley series I have found so fascinating. I also want to talk about one of the films based on his work that I believe does not get nearly enough praise, Frank R Pierson’s 1970 adaptation of le Carré’s 1965 novel, The Looking Glass War.
Melbourne, the city I live in, spent the better part of 2020 in hard lockdown in response to the Covid 19 virus. Reading was one of my many responses to suddenly finding myself with more free time. One very wet, cold Saturday morning at the outset of winter I picked up a paperback I bought ages ago – I can’t even remember when and where – the 1964 Penguin Crime edition of Call for the Dead.… Read more
Posted in British crime cinema, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Non-crime reviews, Sidney Lumet, Spies
Tagged Alistair Maclean, Anthony Hopkins, Call for the Dead, Christopher Jones, Frank R Pierson, George Smiley, John Le Carre, Pia Degermark, Ralph Richardson, Ray McAnally, Sidney Lumet, Susan George, The Honourable Schoolboy, The Little Drummer Girl (2018), The Looking Glass War (1970), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), When Eight Bells Toll (1971)
The Lighthouse

I loved Robert Eggers’s 2015 film, The Witch, so had high hopes for his second big screen effort, The Lighthouse. While The Lighthouse is not without problems, it is a satisfyingly creepy brew of nautical themed horror and troublesome masculinity. You can read my take on the movie for Australian Book Review Arts Update in full here.… Read more
M and my top 10 reads for 2019
It is no exaggeration to say I have been eagerly anticipating Samm Deighan’s monograph of Fritz Lang’s 1931 film. I love the film and I am a big fan of Deighan’s movie writing, so the combination is bound not to disappoint. And it didn’t.
As Deighan puts it in her introduction, M ‘exists in a liminal space between urban social drama, crime thriller, and horror film’. It was arguably the first serial killer film, long before the FBI coined the term in the early 1970s. Anchored by a superb performance by Peter Lorre as the paedophiliac child killer, Hans Beckert, it was certainly the first motion picture in which a serial killer was the central protagonist. Another crucial innovation was the way in which Lang depicted the character of Beckert in a not entirely unsympathetic light. This same sensibility would have a influence on some subsequent serial killer cinema, most notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror/thriller, Psycho.
Deighan discusses M’s broader social and political themes, including the film as a critique of modernity and a text for Germany on the brink of totalitarian control, appearing as it did a year before the Nazi’s assumed power and Lang had to flee the country.
Another fascinating aspect of the book is the discussion of how the themes in M would echo in Lang’s subsequent work, particular the threat of the lawless mob violence and what is perhaps the director’s most defining idea, how even the most noble individual is capable of brutal murderous thoughts and actions.… Read more
Posted in 1960s American crime films, Australian crime fiction, Australian noir, Black pulp fiction, Crime fiction and film from Mexico, David Whish-Wilson, Dystopian cinema, Film Noir, Horror, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Non-crime reviews, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Rollerball, Science fiction and fantasy
Tagged Alfred Hitchcock, alse Dawn, Angela Nagle, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, David Whish-Wilson, Fitz Lang, Hannelore Cayre, Holloway House, Ira Levin, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jeff Sparrow, Kill all Normies, Kinohi Nishkawa, Lawrence Osborne, M (1931), Nada, Nick Riddle, Only to Sleep, Peter Lorre, Psycho (1960), Rosemary’s Baby, Samm Deighan, Serial killer films, Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Undergound, The Damned (1963), The Godmother, Trigger Warning: Political Correctness and the Rise of the Right., True West
My top 10 reads of 2018
I reconciled myself long ago to the fact I will never get to the end of a year without thinking I have not read as much as I should have. That said, I have read some great books this year. Fiction and non-fiction, old books and new, in no particular order, here are my top ten reads for 2018.
Red Dragon, Thomas Harris
This year, I read a few bestsellers from the past to see if I can figure out what made them so successful, and this was my favourite. The book that introduced Hannibal Lector, it is a riveting rollercoaster ride into the serial killer mind. Beautifully written and acutely observed. Harris includes some incredible detail on forensics and police procedure without overdoing it. Red Dragon is the perfect mix of elevated airport novel and hardboiled crime story.
Twisted Clay, Frank Walford
Australian writer, Frank Walford’s 1933 account of a murderous young woman, a pathological liar and sociopath, was banned in Australia until the late 1950s. The story, which contains patricide, sex work, suicide and the young female main character’s burgeoning awareness and enjoyment of her lesbian sexuality, is a wonderfully lurid read. One can only wonder what readers must have made of it in the 1930s. Not surprisingly, they seemed to like it as it was a bestseller in the UK and US, where it was published.… Read more
Posted in 1970s American crime films, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Non-crime reviews, Science fiction and fantasy, True crime
Tagged 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded, Beautiful Revolutionary, Bran Mak Morn: Legion From the Shadows, Charles Taylor, Elka Ray, Frank Walford, Hard Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Post-War Los Angeles, Jack Waters, Jon Lewis, Jon Savage, Karl Edward Wagner, Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American 1970s, Patricia Highsmith, Red Dragon, Ripley's Game, Saigon Dark, Scott Adleberg, Scott Adlerberg, Thomas Harris, Twisted Clay