Other People’s Pulp | Karavansara

22 December 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Unleash the Little Ghost! – The Seventh Curse (1986)

There was a time, in the 1990s, when I watched an awful lot of Hong Kong movies. With the Hong Kong Handover drawing closer and serious critics suddenly discovering John Woo and Tsui Hark, it was quite easy to get a lot of 1980s Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers flicks. And I really liked some of them, and happily forgot about a lot of others, like, right after the end titles stopped rolling.

One of such forgotten movies came up two days ago in a chat with some friends – having just been reviewed by a popular vlogger – and I said to myself, hey, I saw this one, but I actually can’t remember how it was—let’s see it again!

So, here’s a quick review of that weirdest of things, The Seventh Curse.

Continue reading →

18 December 2018
by Davide Mana 4 Comments

The Beast with Five Fingers

As a Christmas gift, I’ve just received a copy of W.F. Harvey’s collection The Beast with Five Fingers, a massive volume featuring fifty odd-stories by this lesser known British practitioner of supernatural and horror fiction.

A Quaker, Harvey had a degree in medicine and had served as a surgeon during the Great War, and writing was not his main career until his early retirement in 1925, aged 40, due to ill health (his lungs had been damaged during a rescue operation at sea during the war). The Beast with Five Fingers is probably his best-known short story, it was originally pyblished in The New Decameron in 1919, and gave the title to the author’s second collection, published in 1928.
In case you are interested, you can read it in Famous Modern Ghost Stories, a fine collection from the ’20s you can download for free as an ebook on the Project Gutenberg (and that features also Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert W. Chambers and Ambrose Bierce, among many others).

And while I am waiting to find the time to read this beauty, last night I went and watched the movie featuring Peter Lorre that in 1946 was based on the Harvey story, and on a script by Curt Siodmak. And here’s my impressions.

Continue reading →

7 December 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Leigh Brackett’s Birthday

Today is the birthday of Leigh Brackett, one of the most influential authors in the field of space opera and planetary romance, or if you prefer of sword & planet, a hard boiled writer and screenwriter, and the wife of Edmond Hamilton.

I first discovered Brackett in the mid 80s, with an Italian translation of The Sword of Rhiannon. Only twenty-odd years later I’d find out that the translation was heavily manipulated, but even in that unfaithful version, I was hooked.
The Skaith books followed – in English, the three Ballantine-Del Rey volumes. And then anything else, in whatever form I was able to find.

It is reading Leigh Brackett that I was made aware of the connection between pulp science fiction and hard boiled fiction. Someone observed that all of Brackett’s heroes were, in the end, Humphrey Bogart, even when they walked the alien dust of distant planets. And this is not a bad thing. By coupling the sense of wonder of the Golden Age of Science Fiction with the melancholy and cynicism of hard boiled, Brackett created a universe that had an incredible stopping power, and feel fresh and exciting seventy years on.

But instead of reading my ramblings, check out this article, called Queen of the Martian Mysteries, by the Michael Moorcock.

And afterwards, check out Black Amazon of Mars, and judge by yourself.

7 December 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Trigger, by Courtney Alameda

Having happily completed BUSCAFUSCO: Fun & Games, and while I let it rest for a few hours before I hand it over to the Amazon oompa loompas, I decided to award myself a little diversion. And as far as A Job Well Done treats go, the Tor.com ebooks are absolutely perfect.

In case you missed them, these are stories – in the novelette/novella range – published as ebooks for cheap by the digital branch of Tor Books, purveyors of fine imaginative fiction.
They offer a wide selection of authors and genres within the science fiction/fantasy field, both well established and up-and-coming, and they are both a great, quick, affordable read and an excellent way to remain current with the latest authors and trends in the field.

So I splurged 83 eurocents and got me a copy of Courtney Alameda’s Trigger, a tough and yet finely nuanced horror tale set in a San Francisco infested by a number of strange creatures.
The Helsing family is charged with commanding the special units of Harkers that hunt down and kill the monsters.
The story mixes horror and action, features a number of easter eggs for horror fans, and delivers a promising worldbuilding. The ebook promises a folow-up to this short piece, in the form of a novel, and I’ll be there to read it as soon as it’s out.
In the meantime, Trigger is quite fun, and a perfect way to finish a long night of writing and insomnia.

3 December 2018
by Davide Mana 5 Comments

Houdini & Doyle

A TV series canceled by Fox after a brief first season of ten episodes. Hadn’t we just left this party?

I have come to discover Houdini & Doyle, the 2016 series killed by Fox after ten episodes, through a circuitous way: I am currently watching, and enjoying, the 1920s whodonnit series Frankie Drake Mysteries, and I was trawling the web in search of details about the series leads.
I am particularly fond of the Mary Shaw character, as portrayed by Rebecca Liddiard, and through her IMDB profile I found a few series that looked promising.

Because after all, an intriguing premise and a star I like are enough for me to give a series a try.

Continue reading →

24 November 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Tea-time with Frankie Drake

I’m sticking to my idea of dropping out of Facebook between 5 and 6.30 PM, and my levels of stress are dropping fast. Just give a wide berth to the socials as people get out of work and pour their frustration online, that’s the trick.

During these 90 minutes of freedom, I’m checking my mail, listening to some music, and maybe watching some TV show. I went through YouTube’s Origin in a week, and right now I’ve found another thing that keeps me happy while I detox from the socials: it’s called Frankie Drake Mysteries, and it’s just my cup of tea.