Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Armchair adventuring


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I caught the Pulp Fiction Bug

92184In Bruce Campbell‘s entertaining Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. the author describes how he became sort of a healthy carrier of the B-movie bug: no matter how high-profile the production in which Campbell is involved, no matter how classy the leading actors, his sole presence on set is granted to turn the whole project into a B-movie extravaganza1.

I think I just caught a similar for of virus – the Pulp bug.
I tend to turn everything I touch into pulp adventure fare.

Consider the following… Continue reading →


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Where the unreal’s real

Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936[11]My friend Clare, over at the Scribblings blog, just published a post about Kipling’s poetry and the voice of objects.
And she says…

Whenever I read one of these poems, I can’t help thinking of those Japanese legends where an object takes on some sort of life by long association with and use by human beings… A concept I’ve always found highly poetic.

I was trying to put together some form of intelligent comment, and then I thought, what the heck, I’ll write a post for Karavansara.
And here we are – fast and loose.
Continue reading →


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Cobra Woman (1944)

220px-CobrawomanThere’s no sand, in Cobra Woman, the 1944 Universal movie that brought Maria Montez, Jon Hall and Sabu back to the screens after the success of Arabian Nights… so this is an anomalous entry in the Tits & Sand series.
Cobra Woman is a South Seas movie – and yes, that’s another genre we’ll have to keep an eye on, because it’s a fun, pulp sort of entertainment.

Directed by Robert Siodmak, Cobra Woman also features Lon Chaney Jr.1 in a small but foundamental role.
And yes, there’s also a big plastic cobra – somewhat embarrassing – but we’ll get to that.
Continue reading →


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Tits & Sand: Arabian Nights, 1942

Arabiannights1Shot well before the tits & sand label was coined, Arabian Nights, directed by John Rawlins has all it needs to be listed in the genre.
Yes, there’s lots of sand, and star Maria Montez does show her graces in a number of lavish costumes.

A pity the story is so flimsy.
But we’ll get there.

Arabian Nights is one of the exotic movies featuring John Hall and Maria Montez poroduced in the ’40s by Universal pictures.
The first Technicolor feature produced by Universal in over a decade, the movie was designed to cash-in on the success of The Thief of Bagdad in 1940.
Both movies feature Sabu in a key role as the sidekick of the male lead. Continue reading →


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My name, all over the world

I took a tour of the Forebears website – a huge, wonderful resource for genealogical research1.
And of course I checked out my family name.
Turns out that Mana is the 8.487th most common surname in the world, so that about 67.000 people share my family name.
Quite a lot2.
But here the fun bit starts, because if we look at the distribution of these cousins of mine…

Selezione_001

… turns out the Mana family name is prevalent in India, while the highest density of Mana is to be found in French Polynesia.

And as the Forebears site points out…

The meaning of this surname is not known.

Exotic and mysterious, eh?

Related articles
  1. and therefore a great resource for writers. ↩
  2. I was reminded of that writer fellow who said “I want nothing to do with Mr Mana or his people” – tough luck…
    And it’s Dr Mana, incidentally. ↩


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Tits & Sand: Maria Montez

Maria-montezIf we talk about Technicolor epics in exotic, Arabian-Nights-style eastern locations – the stuff of Tits & Sand, if you will – we can’t ignore the beautiful Maria Montez.

Born María África Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas in 19121 , daughter of the Spanish Consul in the Dominican Republic, Montez struck gold in Hollywood with a series of movies shot between 1942 and 1945, in which she was partnered with actor Jon Hall.

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Poe’s Extraordinary Tales

extraordinarytalesEdgar Allan Poe cast a long shadow on both mainstream and genre fiction, becoming the patron saint of the genre and its poster-boy until the critics discovered H.P. Lovecraft.
And still, every year, on the outskirts of Halloween, popular culture remembers the first American master.

This year, I celebrated Poe’s memory with a wonderful movie.
Written and directed by Spanish director Raul Garcia, Extraordinary Tales is a 2015 anthology movie, collecting five fine adaptations of Poe’s most popular stories, five short animated movies each strikingly different from the others.
So, yes, it’s a cartoon.
And it’s stunning. Continue reading →