Search
-
Recent Posts
- Ghostly Messages: Australia’s Lost Horror Anthology, ‘The Evil Touch’
- Rosaleen Norton ‘The Witch of Kings Cross’
- Projection Booth episode #505: White Sands (1992)
- 2021 mid-summer reading report back
- Pulp Friday: Cover Me: The Vintage Art of Pan Books 1950-1965
- John le Carre, my 2020 and The Looking Glass War
- Parker on the screen #5: Payback Straight Up (2006)
- The long, dark legacy of William Hjorstberg’s supernatural neo noirs
- Projection Booth episode #495 :To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
- Wanda (1970): Barbara Loden’s film as a noir
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
- 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 Malaysia
- Crime fiction and film from Mexico
- 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
- David Goodis
- David Peace
- David Whish-Wilson
- Derek Raymond
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Joseph Losey
- Karen Black
- 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 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
- 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 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
- 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
- Killer Covers
- Lost Classics of Teen Lit 1939-1989
- Men's Pulp Mags
- Mporcius Fiction Log
- Murder, Mayhem and Long Dogs
- Paperback Warrior
- Pop Sensation
- Pulp artists
- Pulp Covers
- Pulp Crazy
- Pulp Flakes
- Pulp International
- Pulp Magazines Project
- Pulp Serenade
- Realms of the Night
- 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
Tag Archives: Wake in Fright (1971)
Monster Fest 2016 appearances: The Evil Touch & Homicide, episode 27, ‘Witch Hunt’
A quick heads up to Melbourne readers – Monster Fest 2016 will happen on take place from November 23 – 27, at the Lido Cinema, Hawthorn. Monster Fest is not something I have had much to do with in previous years, but this year it has been hugely revamped, largely thanks to the new program director, Kier-La Janisse, who has put together a new programming team, of which I am a part of.
Anyway, I particularly wanted to draw your attention to two events I am a part of.
Low Grade Transmissions From Hell: Revisiting the Lost Australian Horror Anthology, The Evil Touch
The early seventies are viewed as a peak period for horror anthology television. The Australian show, The Evil Touch is unique in that it was the only horror anthology show made locally, specifically for the US market. Successful in America, it bombed when aired in Australia in 1973 and the 26 episode series is now largely forgotten. Although cheaply made, The Evil Touch is strangely effective, at times, genuinely disturbing television. The grainy look and surreal narrative style give it the feel – in the words of American television critic John Kenneth Muir – of ‘a low grade transmission straight from hell’.
As part of Monster Fest’s Monster Academy, I’ll be giving a talk on the origins, making and reception of The Evil Touch.… Read more
Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian television history, Crawford Productions, Horror
Tagged Ben Wheatley, Cigarette (2016), Crawford Productions TV crime drama, Dog Eat Dog (2016), Homicide, Kadaitcha Country, Kier-La Janisse, Monster Fest 2016, Paul Anthony Nelson, Ted Kotcheff, The Evil Touch, Wake in Fright (1971), Witch Hunt (1965)
Wake In Fright: Dusty and Thirsty in the Outback
If the popularity of writers such as Donald Ray Pollock, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell and Frank Bill is anything to go by, rural noir is a big deal in the United States.
While it may not be anywhere near as well-known, for my money, the 1961 novel Wake In Fright by Australian writer Kenneth Cook is up there with the best of them. The film adaption of Wake In Fright hit Australian cinemas in 1971. Forty-three years later and it’s hard to think of comparable piece of cinema that has come out of the country.
Wake In Fright was a blistering take on three of the central features of the 1960s white Anglo Saxon culture in Australia: mateship, the romance of the outback, and drinking. Especially drinking.
You can read the rest of this review here at the Criminal Element site.
Posted in Australian crime film, Book Reviews, Rural noir
Tagged Kenneth Cook, rural noir, Wake in Fright (1971)
Book review: Wake in Fright
Rural noir is big at the moment, if the interest in US writers like Donald Ray Pollock, Cormac McCarthy and Daniel Woodrell, is anything to go by.
While it is not be as well known, Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel Wake in Fight is as good as anything that’s come out of the southern US, a searing story of masculinity, drinking and violence in regional Australia that still packs a punch today.
Fear of being trapped in the outback, as we call the vast expanse of harsh terrain that makes up the majority of Australia, is still semi hard-wired into the psyche of most city dwelling Australians. So, imagine how terrifying the prospect was in the sixties, when our interior was so much more remote and alien.
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 civilisation, except the ability of the local pub to keep the beer cold. As Grant puts it: “In the winter you wished for the summer, in the summer you wished for the winter, and all the time you wished to blazes you were a thousand miles from Tiboonda.”
Grant has six weeks leave ahead of him and 140 pounds in his pocket.… Read more