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Tag Archives: Mike Hodges
Parker on the screen #4: Slayground (1983)

Next in my series on Don Westlake aka Richard Stark’s criminal character of Parker on the screen is the 1983 film, Slayground.
Slayground is based on the 1971 book of the same name, the 14th instalment in the first cycle of Westlake’s Parker series. I am going to put my cards on the table up front and say that while Slayground is among my least favourite of that earlier tranche of Parker novels, I think is film, however, is very good. It has very little to do with the book, but as I said early in this series, I’m not going to get hung up on how much the films adhere to their source material.
The novel depicts what happens after Parker and his criminal associates are forced to to hire a second-rate wheelman for an armoured car heist they are planning. The job goes wrong and Parker narrowly escapes the law with $74,000 from the robbery. He stumbles across an amusement park called Fun Island, closed for the winter, and figures it is as good a place as any to hide until the heat from the job dies down. A major hitch arises when a couple of corrupt cops make Parker entering the park.… Read more
Posted in 1970s American crime films, 1980s American crime films, British crime cinema, Bryan Brown, Crime film, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Giallo cinema, Heist films, Neo Noir, Parker
Tagged Billie Whitelaw, British giallo, Bryan Brown, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, heist film, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003), Mel Smith, Mike Hodges, Ned Eisenberg, Not the Nine O'clock News, Parker, Parker on the screen, Payback Straight Up (1999), Peter Coyote, Slayground (1983), Terry Bedford, The Omen (1976), Trevor Preston
Book Review: Getting Carter, Ted Lewis & the Birth of Brit Noir
The time is past when one could accurately describe Ted Lewis as a lost or under appreciated author. His best books have recently been re-released, Mike Hodge’s 1971 film, Get Carter, based on Lewis second novel, Jack’s Return Home, continues to be seen as a crime cinema classic, and Lewis’s profound, albeit posthumous, influence on the origins on Brit Noir is regularly reiterated by many of the leading lights of crime fiction.
But we know little about Lewis as a person and the influences on his work. Nick Triplow’s Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir is obviously the product of considerable time, energy and shoe leather spent hunting down the facts of Lewis’s life. That Triplow doesn’t completely succeed in unravelling all the mysteries surrounding Lewis’s spectacular rise and fall is not for want of trying and, it must be stressed, the book is none the worse for it.
Contemporary literary culture, with its focus on the writer’s journey, literature as personal confession and the book scribe as media celebrity, is a relatively new phenomena. Lewis went to his grave without leaving a detailed archive of papers or journals and having only done a handful of newspaper interviews. He had neither the time nor, one suspects, inclination to record his inner most thoughts.… Read more
Posted in Book Reviews, British crime cinema, British pulp fiction, Crime fiction, Crime film, David Goodis, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Pulp fiction, Stanley Baker, Ted Lewis
Tagged Cy Endfield, David Goodis, GBH, Get Carter (1971), Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir, Hell Drivers (1957), Hell is a City (1960), Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon, Jack Carter's law, Jack's Return Home, Joesph Losey, Mike Hodges, Nick Triplow, Ted Lewis, The Criminal (1960), Val Guest
Ephemera from the 1971 film, Get Carter
Following on my essay earlier this week in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Ted Lewis, his Jack Carter books and the film adaption of the first book, Get Carter (which you can check out here if you if you are interested), I thought readers might be interested in a selection of ephemera from the books and film.
The 1971 movie, directed by Mike Hodges, does not need any introduction here. While it is by no means the best british crime movie ever made, as some would claim, it is a good one and has been very influential, in terms of plot, characterisation and visual feel.
Enjoy.
For those who are interested, there are a lot more terrific behind the scenes images from Get Carter here on the official Ian Hendry website.