Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

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Vengeance, Unlimited.

One starts thinking about pulp tv shows, and soon finds himself at the end of a very short list.
But maybe it’s just a matter of looking sharply at old series.

Now, when I think about pulp, I think chiefly about adventure pulp – Indiana Jones sort of stuff.
But there was much more, to the pulps, than Indy-style adventures.

What about the great avengers of pulp fiction?
The Shadow, The Spider, the aptly named Avenger, with his Justice Inc.

Well, at the end of the twentieth century, two writers and producers, John McNamara and David Simkins, created a show for ABC, updating those avengers of old.
The show was called Vengeance Unlimited, and it featured Michael Madsen in the role of the deceptively suave, and downright menacing Mr Chapell.

The premise is simple – if you have a problem, and the forces of Law and Order cannot help you, you can hire Mr Chapell.
For one million dollars, your problem will become his problem.
And he will solve it.
If you do not have one million handy, there’s an alternative deal – you agree to owe Mr Chapell a single favor.
He will call you.
He will tell you what to do.
You’ll do it, and you’ll be free of any other obligation.
Easy.

The show is a tight, unusual crime drama – the stories are ingenious, the set-up is classy, and Mr Chapell, who “once had a very bad Monday” is a wonderful mix of ice-cold logic and of scary madness; and admittedly, few actors out there can do scary-mad-but-nice better than Michael Madsen.
The character has obvious debts with the Shadow (the “I saved you, now you’re mine” premise), with the Spider (the over-the-top gusto with which Mr Chapell hits – phisically and psichologically – his foes) and with the Avenger (the hinted trauma in the main character’s past, the idea of a corporation devoted to justice, or vengeance).

English: Head shot of actress Kathleen YorkThe cast includes a lot of well respected TV stalwarts, and Kathleen York, as the only other recurring character, is an unusual foil for Madsen.
The nocturnal sets, the quiet of suburbia being shattered by crime and violence, the humor and the spirit of the series marked this as an excellent show, one that should have been allowed to find its legs and start running.
But once again, the show did not last long, and after just sixteen one-hour episodes, the series was canceled.

Why?
Was it the violence?
Was it the idea of a hero acting outside of the law, to hit those bad guys who could work the system against itself and evade normal justice?
I do not know.
But as someone that once had a very bad Monday myself, I always loved this show, and its intelligent update of a classic pulp standard.

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The Amazons of Samarkand

As-One-Tai-Chi-0-Legendary-Amazons-An-Inaccurate-Memoir-Design-of-Death-trailer-e-poster-5

Historically inaccurate, maybe… but cool!

As I already mentioned, with a new series in the works, I’m researching my next (?) short story.
One finds the most wonderful things, in old travellers’ tales.
Here’s a snippet from the diaries of Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, Spanish envoy in the court of Timur Leng (or Tamerlane), in 1403.
It is exactly the sort of information I was looking for.
And I thought you might like it, too.

Fifteen days journey from the city of Samarcand, in the direction of China, there is a land inhabited by Amazons, and to this day they continue the custom of having no men with them, except at one time of the year; when they are permitted, by their leaders, to go with their daughters to the nearest settlements, and have communication with men, each taking the one that pleases her most, with whom they live, and eat, and drink, after which they return to their own land. If they bring forth daughters afterwards, they keep them, but they send the sons to their fathers. These women are subject to Timur Beg; they used to under the Emperor of Cathay, and they are Christians of the Greek Church. They are of the lineage of the Amazons who were at Troy, when it was destroyed by the Greeks.

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File under ‘hype’ – a new story coming soon

Amunet

There’s a new story coming.
First in a series, hopefully – with two other shorts in the works.
The beta readers just sent  in their reports, my editrix did her magic on the text, the cover’s ready, now time for a final re-reading and a check of my sometimes quirky (as in “wrong”) English, and we’ll be all set to go.

The story has a strange genesis.
The main characters, Roman centurion Aculeo and Aegyptian princess  Amunet, began their life and their unlikely partnership on my Italian-language blog (strategie evolutive), in a series of posts I did on how to use the web and other resources to try and hoodwink the reader into believing the author does know a lot more about a lot of stuff when he writes some kind of historical fiction.

“Let’s say I’m writing a story about a Roman centurion saving a plucky Egyptian princess from some lovecraftian horror. Let’s start with their names…”

Using Aculeo and Amunet as examples, I built an outline and sketched some characters, throwing in some handy references and a few details; and I did in fact hoodwink my blog readers into believing I knew what I was talking about.
Nice and smooth.

Fast forward two years. Continue reading →


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Bringing ’em back Alive

4998492-lWe discussed Tales of the Gold Monkey – now it would be bad form not mentioning the other pulp show of the ’80s.

And the other pulp show of the ’80s was, of course, Bring ’em Back Alive, which ran for 17 60 minutes (45-minutes according to other sources) episodes and then folded, in 1982.

The set-up: Frank Buck (Bruce Boxleitner in his pre-Sheridan youth) is a big game hunter turned animal collector in Southeast Asia and… well, and that’s it.

The main problem, to me, when it comes to Bring ’em back Alive is, the sense of void which lurks sometimes beneath the Gold Monkey stories, here strides frightfully across the script.

Continue reading →