|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 2 |
|
|
 The third in the "Dexter" series of novels that inspired the hit TV show. |
Some ideal gifts for your
murkier, spookier friends
of TheColumnists.com
Having trouble finding
the right Christmas gift for your more macabre friends?
Do they wrinkle up their noses at the words "Mary Higgins
Clark," who always has a book out for holiday shoppers?
Do they look insulted if you say, you've been thinking of buying
someone the first five seasons of "Murder, She Wrote"?
Are they unimpressed when you hint you've found an original 1931
"Frankenstein" movie poster for under $25,000?
Well, brace yourself. Chances are you're dealing with a HARD CORE fan of mystery, noir and horror. You have your work cut out for you--unless, of course, you keep reading this column.
I'm pretty HARD CORE myself--and not just in the area of "adult entertainment." I like the offbeat, the unusual and the rare. I wouldn't, however, pay thousands for an old movie poster, no matter how great it might be. In fact, I've heard it said that I'm so tight my shoes even squeak. But that's another subject that we won't discuss today.
Here are some suggestions you might think about while listening to all those Christmas songs on virtually every radio station and praying for your holiday shopping to finally be over. We've opted for being creative with your gift-giving, searching out items you can put together to give something nobody else is likely to give. We're also suggesting one-stop shopping at www.amazon.com, which carries both books and DVDs, offers free delivery on larger orders and is very reliable. (We have no financial arrangement with Amazon, by the way.)
Try these suggestions:
1. Build Your Own Complete
"DEXTER" Gift Package.
Showtime's "DEXTER" is the most
innovative and entertaining mystery/horror show on television
today. It's the story of a "nice" serial killer who
only kills other serial killers--and it's done with humor and
lots of exceptional writing. Because it's on a premium network,
lots of your penny-pinching pals have probably never seen it.
So why not arrange a dynamite introduction to this hottest of
"dark" programs by buying your pal the complete DVD
set of season one ($27.99) AND the original novel by Jeff Lindsay
that started it all--"Darkly Dreaming Dexter" ($10.36).
If you're really well-heeled and the gift recipient is very important
to you, why not add Lindsay's two sequels, "Dearly Devoted
Dexter" ($10.36) and "Dexter in the Dark" ($16.29),
which just came out this fall?
2. Create your own complete set of the "Frost" novels, which are even more entertaining than the fabulous "A Touch of Frost" TV programs.
Hardly anybody in America has read the richly fashioned novels about England's Inspector Jack Frost, the sharp-eyed detective who rebels against authority, bureaucratic work details and virtually all the rules of police work. Believe me, the books by R.D. Wingfield, all available in paperback through Amazon.com, are even better than the marvelous TV series, consistently England's most popular detective show when it was on the air.
The books in order with Amazon prices: "Frost at Christmas" (1995. $6.99); "A Touch of Frost" (1996, $9.82); "Hard Frost" (1996, $8.50); "Night Frost" (1997, $10.24); "Winter Frost" (2004, $9.99). Amazon is also taking advance orders for the latest in the series, "Killing Frost" (2008).
3. Order a copy of Fritz Lang's silent sci-fi classic "Woman in the Moon" from KINO Video.
If your friend was wowed by Fritz Lang's German silent classic "Metropolis," which features the dazzling mad laboratory sequence where a female robot is built to replace a real woman, get him/her this real rarity now available in a beautifully restored version featuring more footage than any other previous home video version. "Woman in the Moon" was made in 1929 at the very end of the silent picture era and contains remarkable moon landing effects and a spy plot that will remind you of Lang's "Dr. Mabuse" spy films. Amazon offers it for $26.99.
4. Buy the "Legends of Horror" DVD set which collects six of the most bizarre major studio horror movies of the 1930s in one package.
This super set from Warner Home Video--$27.99 at Amazon--contains Peter Lorre's first American picture, "Mad Love" (1935), which is by far the best-ever version of the classic tale "The Hands of Orlac." Lorre is the mad surgeon who saves the career of concert pianist Colin Clive (Dr. Frankenstein from the first two Universal "Frankenstein" movies) by replacing his severed hands with the hands of a knife-throwing killer. It also includes MGM's "Mark of the Vampire" (1935), director Tod Browning's remake of his lost Lon Chaney silent classic, "London After Midnight," starring Bela Lugosi, as well as Browning's "The Devil-Doll" (1936), in which escaped convict Lionel Barrymore shrinks people to doll size and sends them on criminal assignments. Also in the collection is "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (1932), MGM's big budget thriller starring Boris Karloff as the Chinese master criminal and Myrna Loy as his seductive daughter. Rounding out the set are two films from Warner Bros. The first is "Doctor X" (1932), the two-color Technicolor horror film about a "moon killer" who creates his own monster face and hands from bubbling cauldrons of artificial human flesh. That one stars nasty Lionel Atwill and glorious Fay Wray, screaming her lungs out in a rehearsal for "King Kong" the following year. The other is NOT a sequel, despite its title, "The Return of Doctor X" (1939). It's the only film ever made in which Humphrey Bogart plays a monster--brought back to life to menace females with his maniacal experiments.
5. Fill out your friend's Boris Karloff collection with the DVD boxed sets "The Boris Karloff Collection" and "Boris Karloff: Icons of Horror Collection."
The first set contains five "B"
movies Karloff made at Universal between 1937-52 and the second
set features four "B" pictures made at Columbia between
1935-42.
The one called "The Boris Karloff Collection" ($16.49
at Amazon) includes a non-horror picure, "Night Key" (1937),
in which Karloff is a rather eccentric inventor. The female lead
is Jean Rogers, best known as the original Dale Arden in Universal's
1936 "Flash Gordon" serial. She plays Karloff's daughter--and,
no, she doesn't look like him, for which we're eternally grateful.
Also in the set is the big budget 1939 historical epic "Tower of London" about the reign of Richard III (Basil "Sherlock
Holmes" Rathbone). Karloff plays Mord, the ax-wielding,
club-footed and bald executioner for King Richard. This film
also was the first horror movie to feature a young Vincent Price,
who suffers badly from his first encounter with Karloff. Next
in this set is "The
Climax" (1944), a Technicolor film
in which Karloff is a mad killer, crazed with jealousy over a
beautiful opera singer (Susannah Foster). Fourth in the set is
"The Strange Door" (1951), based on an obscure Robert Louis Stevenson
story. Charles Laughton is the real star of this one and Karloff
is a supporting character, one of evil nobleman Laughton's servants.
The final film is the set is "The
Black Castle" (1952), with Karloff
in a small, non-threatening role while Stephen McNally plays
the sinister villain.
The "Boris Karloff: Icons of Horror Collection" ($14.99 at Amazon) contains generally better films, starting with "The Black Room" (1935), a rich period thriller in which Karloff plays an evil 19th century Hungarian nobleman AND his good twin brother. This is a very good film with a great ending and TWO marvelous Karloff performances. Next in the set is "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939), the first of Karloff's so-called "mad doctor" movies for Columbia, which is one of those "vengenance-seeking hanged man brought back to life" stories that Karloff did so well. Following that is "Before I Hang" (1940), with Karloff as a mad doctor whose serum makes people younger, but more murderous. The final one in the set is "The Boogie Man Will Get You" (1942), a stupid comedy with Karloff as a nutcase scientist trying to build a race of supermen. Notably, though, the cast features Peter Lorre, paired for the first time with Karloff; Larry Parks, who went on to fame as Al Jolson in "The Jolson Story" and "Jolson Sings Again," and one-time light-heavyweight boxing champion "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom.
6. Create a "Welcome to Noir" gift package by assembling a small collection of seminal noir novels in trade paperback editions: "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James M. Cain, "The Black Angel" by Cornell Woolrich, "In A Lonely Place" by Dorothy B. Hughes, "Strangers On A Train" by Patricia Highsmith and "The Killer Inside Me" by Jim Thompson.
Cain's original "Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934) is a taut, no-nonsense thriller about a drifter in Depression America who falls for a road house seductress and helps her murder her husband. Amazon offers a fine edition of this for $9.56. Woolrich's "Black Angel" is a grim, urban thriller about a woman and a hard-drinking musician trying to clear her husband of a murder charge. It was the basis for the 1946 movie of the same title, starring Dan Duryea. A new edition comes out late this month, but you can pre-order it from Amazon for $10.17. "In A Lonely Place" is Hughes' cynical novel about a screenwriter trying to clear himself of a murder charge in post-war Hollywood. It was the basis for the 1950 Bogart movie of the same name. Amazon has this for $10.17. Highsmith's "Strangers On A Train" was her first published novel--and is much darker than Hitchcock's famous movie. Get this at Amazon for $11.16. Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me" (1952) is about a Southern sheriff who pretends to be a dumb jerk, but it really a psychotic killer. Amazon lists it at $10.36. These novels will help your friend understand the whole noir movement--and possibly get him or her hooked on it like millions of other readers and moviegoers.
 |
Woolrich's "The Black Angel" will be published Dec. 30 and can be pre-ordered now from Amazon. com |
7. Collect your own "Founders of the Mystery" collection with the following books in quality editions:"The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins; "Raffles, The Master Cracksman" by E.W. Hornung; "The Circular Staircase" by Mary Roberts Rinehart; "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" by Agatha Christie; "The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan; "The Continental Op" by Dashiell Hammett and "Trent's Last Case" by E.C. Bentley.
Collins' "The Woman in White" (1860) was one of the building blocks of the modern suspense mystery, the tale of a macabre plan to steal the fortune of a beautiful young woman by placing her in a lunatic asylum and faking her death. Amazon has the Penguin Classic edition for $9.00. "Raffles" (1899) by Hornung, the brother-in-law of "Sherlock Holmes" author Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of the first collections of stories about a reformed burglar and safecracker named A.J. Raffles who now works for justice., He was the forerunner to a generation of future anti-heroes of the mystery. Amazon has the book for $13.00. Rinehart's "The Circular Staircase" (1908) is one of the first "women in jeopardy" thrillers and became the basis for the stage and screen versions, known as "The Bat." You can get it for $6.99 at Amazon. Christie's "Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920) is the first novel featuring sleuth Hercule Poirot and represents the great British tradition of the "puzzle" msytery. "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (1915) is a classic spy novel and the first to feature hero Richard Hannay. Inspired the famous 1935 Hitchcock film. Amazon has it for $9.00 in the Penguin Classic version. "The Continental Op" was a nameless agent who worked as an "operative" for The Continental Detective Agency--and he was the hero of many stories in the new American "hard-boiled" school of mystery led by Dashiell Hammett. Amazon has a collection of these stories at $11.05. Finally, "Trent's Last Case" (1912) was intended to be a satire of English mysteries in the wake of Sherlock Holmes, but became an enormous best-seller which most readers accepted as a genuine mystery, featuring investigative journalist Philip Trent. Many experts now believe its publication launched England's Golden Age of Mystery. A deluxe edition from Amazon goes for $25.80.
©2007 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Dec. 17, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|