Search
-
Recent Posts
- Prime Cut at 50: looking back at possibly the strangest American crime film of the 1970s
- Mid-year reading report back: David Whish-Wilson, Simenon takes a train & 1970s Mexico noir
- Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback
- 50 years of Milano Calibre 9 and the crime cinema of Italy’s ‘years of lead’
- The mystery of Billy Rags
- Sessions from two-day City Lights symposium on Dangerous Visions & New Worlds book now available to watch
- Pulp Friday: More late 1960s and 1970s pulp and popular fiction about the Vietnam War
- The bleak, propulsive noir of Georges Simenon’s Romans Durs
- Dangerous Visions & New Worlds: the reviews so far & upcoming two-day City Lights SF symposium
- My cultural highlights of 2021
Categories
- 1960s American crime films
- 1970s American crime films
- 1980s American crime films
- 1990s 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
- Ben Wheatley
- Billie Whitelaw
- Black pulp fiction
- 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
- Cinema culture
- 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 Latin and Central America
- Crime fiction and film from Malaysia
- Crime fiction and film from New Zealand
- 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
- Dangerous Visions and New Worlds Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1985
- David Goodis
- David Peace
- David Whish-Wilson
- Derek Raymond
- Diana Dors
- Dirk Bogarde
- Don Siegel
- Don Winslow
- Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark
- Dystopian cinema
- Ernest Borgnine
- Eurocrime
- Fawcett Gold Medal Books
- Femme fatale
- Fernando Di Leo
- Filipino genre films
- Film Noir
- Forgotten Melbourne
- French cinema
- French crime fiction
- Garry Disher
- Gene Hackman
- George V Higgins
- Georges Simenon
- 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
- Gregory Peck
- Gunshine State
- Heist films
- Horror
- Horwitz Publications
- Humphrey Bogart
- Ian Fleming
- Interviews
- Ira Levin
- James Caan
- James Crumley
- James Ellroy
- James Hadley Chase
- James Woods
- Jim Brown
- Jim Thompson
- Joel Edgerton
- John Frankenheimer
- Joseph Losey
- Karen Black
- Kerry Greenwood
- Kinji Fukasaku
- Larry Kent
- Laura Elizabeth Woolett
- 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 Adventure Magazines
- Michael Caine
- Michael Fassbender
- Mickey Spillane
- 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
- Peter Yates
- Poliziotteschi
- Pulp fiction
- Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s
- Pulp fiction set in Asia
- Pulp Friday
- Pulp paperback cover art
- Qui Xiaolong
- Raymond Chandler
- Richard Burton
- Richard Conte
- Robert Aldrich
- Robert Mitchum
- Robert Ryan
- Robert Stone
- Rock Hudson
- Roger Smith
- Rollerball
- Rosaleen Norton
- Roy Scheider
- Rural noir
- Sam Peckinpah
- Samuel Fuller
- Science fiction and fantasy
- Scripts Publications
- Sidney Lumet
- Sidney Poitier
- Simon Harvester
- Snowtown
- Snubnose Press
- Spies
- Stanley Baker
- Sterling Hayden
- Steve McQueen
- Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980
- Stuart Rosenberg
- 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
- William Friedkin
- Woody Strode
- Yakuza films
- Yaphet Kotto
Nothing but noir
Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
- American Pulps
- Bear Alley
- Bloody, Spicy, Books
- Comics Down Under
- Everything second hand
- Existential Ennui
- Greenleaf Classic Books
- Irv O. Neil's Erotica is My Trade
- Killer Covers
- Lost Classics of Teen Lit 1939-1989
- Luminist Archives
- Men's Pulp Mags
- Mporcius Fiction Log
- Murder, Mayhem and Long Dogs
- Neglected Books
- Nocturnal Revelries
- Paperback Warrior
- Pop Sensation
- Pulp artists
- Pulp Covers
- Pulp Crazy
- Pulp Flakes
- Pulp International
- Pulp Magazines Project
- Pulp Serenade
- Realms of the Night
- Romance Fiction Has a History
- Rough Edges
- Sin Street Sleaze
- Spy Guys and Gals
- The department of Afro American Research Arts & Culture
- The Dusty Bookcase
- The Haunted World of Richard Sala
- The Moon Lens
- The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog
- The Pulp & Paperback Fiction Reader
- Too Much Horror Fiction
- True Pulp Fiction
- Vault of Horror
- Vintage Nurse Romance Novels
- Vintage Romance Novels
- Welcome to the Pan Paperback
- Yellow and Creased
Support This Site
If you like what I do please support me on Ko-fi
Category Archives: Rural noir
Wake In Fright at 50: mateship, masculinity and drinking in the Australian outback
Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright turns fifty this year. Based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Australian author Kenneth Cook, it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 12, 1971 and was released in cinemas in Australia on October 9. Despite being five decades old, it is hard to think of comparable piece of cinema that has come out of this country. Wake In Fright is not only a stunning rural noir, it is a blistering take on three of the central features of white Anglo Saxon male culture in 1960s Australia (although much of it is still highly relevant to today): mateship, the romance of the outback, and drinking. Especially drinking.
The central character, John Grant, is a mild-mannered teacher working in a tiny speck of a town called Tiboonda. Its isolation and distance from the coast has obliterated nearly all aspects of civilization, except the ability of the local pub to keep the beer cold. Grant is leaving for his Christmas holidays. He has his holiday pay in his pocket and fantasies of meeting up with his girlfriend in Sydney. All that stands in his way is an overnight train stop in Bundanyabba or ‘the Yabba’ as the locals call it.
Grant passes his night in the Yabba sinking a few beers in one of the town’s many pubs.… Read more
Book review: The Student
Regular Pulp Curry readers will know I have a particular fondness for noir fiction. In particular, Australian noir fiction. And, let’s be honest, when all is said and done, there’s not much Australian noir fiction, and I mean really noir fiction, out there. The publication of Iain Ryan’s The Student adds another more book to this rather slender canon of local crime writing.
I reviewed Ryan’s debut novel, Four Days, on this site when it was released in late 2015. A very dark police procedural set in the Queensland cities of Cairns and Brisbane in the 1980s, the plot of Four Days involves a borderline sociopathic cop with a drinking problem who becomes obsessed with the case of a murdered prostitute, in the process coming up against a police hierarchy who are keen to bury any investigation into her death.
Now Melbourne based, Ryan grew up in Queensland – a place that for various I am also very familiar with – and he completely nailed the corruption and picturesque sleaze that typified much of the state in the eighties, a time when its police force was one of the most violent and corrupt in Australia. Ryan cited James Ellroy as a major influence and I was particularly taken with the way he was able to pay homage to legendary crime writer without sinking into pastiche or cliche.… Read more
Strangerland
Initial impressions can be deceiving in Kim Farrant’s debut feature movie, Strangerland.
On the surface it appears to be another version of the women-and-children-in-danger-plot-line so popular at the moment (think Gone Girl, Top of the Lake and half the crime novels that have been published in the last few years). But the film boasts some interesting twists and bravely examines themes you won’t see in many of the similar films.
The Parker’s have just moved to Nathgari, a spec of a town (‘population 1048’), surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of beautiful but inhospitably sun blasted outback. The family unit – Catherine (Nicole Kidman), her highly-strung husband, Matthew (Joseph Fiennes), daughter Lily (Maddison Brown) and young son, Tommy (Nicholas Hamilton) – is clearly under pressure. Tommy, in particular, is intensely resentful about the move.
It becomes obvious fairly quickly that whatever it is that they’ve had to flee is connected to Lily and her burgeoning sexuality. Despite being a minor, she is sexually active and this has caused problems in the past, clearly sign posted when Matthew tells his son: ‘Don’t let her out of your sight, ok?’
It is no surprise then when both kids go missing. Indeed, Matthew watches from one of the windows of their home, as they leave in the middle of the night.… Read more
My top fiction and non-fiction reads of 2014
Time for me to present Pulp Curry readers with the list of my best reads for 2014. As is customary, I will start off by admitting, yet again, I feel I have not read nearly as much as I should have. My reading this year has been dominated by books for work, including material for freelance articles and the various literary festival panels I’ve been involved in. A considerable amount of my attention has also been directed to reading related to the non-fiction book I have been co-editing, Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950-1980, which is scheduled to be published in October 2015.
With all that said, here’s the top ten books I read in 2014. I’ve split my list in two this year – fiction and non-fiction.
My top fiction reads are as follows:
Escape Dominique Manotti
I have long been interested in the political history in Italy in the seventies and eighties, the so-called ‘years of lead’, when left wing paramilitary groups and right wing extremists in the military and police were locked in a shadowy, violent conflict. Dominique Manotti’s Escape is set in the late eighties and deals with the aftermath of that conflict. Filippo is a common street hood that shares a prison cell with Carlos, a charismatic former Red Brigade member.… Read more
Posted in Crime fiction, Eurocrime, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Megan Abbott, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Rural noir, True crime, Wallace Stroby
Tagged Any Cold Jordon, Dark Passage (1947), David Bottoms, Dominique Manotti, Escape, Eva Dolan, Goodis: A Life in Black and White, Jacks and Jokers, Joe Haldeman, Kings Cross: A Biography, Long Way Home, Louis Nowra, Malcolm Braly, Matthew Condon, Megan Abbott, Philippe Garnier, Shake Him Till He Rattles, Stephen Volk, The Fever, The Forever War, Whistable