Travel back in time to kidnap historical figures for a few days, which then produce neural copies for the entertainment industry. It’s a job like any other, for “Bill” Billings.
A short orientation course, and then a jump in the past, to extract another subject. In Baghdad, in the ninth century, this time, to kidnap Scheherazade, the daughter of the Vizier, the greatest storyteller of her time.
Only, this time it does not work out as expected.
Not only does Bill kidnap the wrong girl, but a failure of his time machine deposits him and his unexpected companion… elsewhere.
Very much elsewhere.
Is it simply a post-human future, as Bill suggests, or is it the land of the Jinns, as claimed by the second-born of the Vizier? Continue reading
Category Archives: Other People’s Pulp
Tits & Sand: The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
Let’s go back to Tits & Sand movies with the mother of them all – the 1940 version of The Thief of Baghdad.
And I know, there were Arabian Adventure movies before, but this one was and is, to me, the definitive item. Once again, this was a movie that was a staple of afternoon reruns on the telly in the ‘90s, and before that I saw it in a small parish cinema, and boy did it make an impression.
So be warned – I’ll wax nostalgic, or maybe not. But this is one of my favorite movies from way back when…
Asteria and the spirit of peplum
And so…
The first story of Asteria was a straightforward peplum, but with a strong influence from Go Nagai and Mazinger Z in particular.
The second Asteria adventure was a Harold Lambesque story of Mongol warriors, with a supernatural horror twist.
The third Asteria novelette, that’s coming out in the weekend, is a lace & steel sort of swashbuckler, with a side of clockpunk shenanigans.
It is fitting, I think, that the fourth story, that I started writing yesterday, will be a tits & sand adventure with Arabian Nights and Marco Polo references. Continue reading
IV Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon: The Mysterious Island (1929)
It’s the Fourth Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and dedicated to the most famous dynasty of actors in the history of 20th century cinema.
So please direct your browsers to the above link and check out a wealth of posts about some well known and some more obscure movies featuring the Barrymores.
And then come back here, because we will take a look to a strange little thing called The Mysterious Island. Continue reading
A boy and his shark
It was because of my friend Lucy, that is growing restless while we wait for The Meg to hit the screens.
She did a post on an online magazine about shark movies, and she mentioned something that crawled back from my memory like a celluloid ghost – Ti-Koyo e il suo pescecane, a 1962 movie by Folco Quilici, known in the English-speaking world as Tiko and the Shark.
I had very vague recollections of the film, that I saw sometimes in the early ‘70s, when I was 7 or 8 years old.
I checked out Wikipedia for more info about the movie, and found a snippet of the original review, published in 1962 by La Stampa, the daily newspaper of the city where I grew up.
With its fairytale background, the film often has an intoxicating airiness, a pungent kindness; but it could and should become saturated with only the friendship with the shark, as a symbol of an escape from time. Instead, it gives the protagonist the second company of a beautiful little Chinese woman, who for love of the beautiful boy embraces the wild life. This is a coup out of Tarzan; Quilici charged too much the spectacular side of his film proposing a consortium man – woman – shark, really utopian for those who know the true female character. Just like he abused monologues.
The bit about the true female character and its connoisseurs, plus the snub aimed at Tarzan, convinced me that I needed to rewatch the movie, and write a post about it. Continue reading
John D. MacDonald in Hell
One of the writers I like the most, and one from whom I learned a lot (or tried to) is John D. MacDonald. I’ve been a fan of his Travis McGee stories for ages.
So you can imagine what happened in my brain when I chanced upon an open call for a very short story for a small publishing house that had two requirements:
- A famous writer
- His experiences in the afterlife
And so today I skipped lunch and I hammered out a 1500-words story called The Man with the Red-Hot Typewriter.
In which John D. MacDonald finds himself in the Chinese hell. That it’s not that different from Travis McGee’s Florida: hot, damp, and the cops are crooked.
I hope they like it enough to buy it.
I’ve just sent it off, and now it’s just a matter of sitting and waiting.
That, my friends, is hell.
You need to know Jack Hunter
Let’s start with a very simple question: why is Hollywood wasting money on those Marvel comics flicks, instead of finding a good director and a good cast, and start making movies based on the Jack Hunter stories by Stephen Jared?
Or any other book of his, really.
But I’d rather have a Jack Hunter series of movies, thank you.
Three, for starters. Or a good TV series with high production values.
Yes, a TV series would be perfect.
So listen up, Netflix: look at Miss Fisher’s murder mysteries, take notes, then option Stephen Jared’s Jack Hunter books.
Start earning the money we pay you, what the heck.
OK, hyperbole apart, what am I talking about?
Let me tell you… Continue reading
Karavansara 