Crikey, I don't know how I was unaware that this kind of thing was still being published. I'm going to see what's on the racks next time I'm at Borders.

I mentioned him in a thread I started. Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm books, like Richard S. Prather's Shell Scott series or John D. McDonald's books about Travis McGee, belong to an earlier era. They began in the 50s, and while Hamilton never got the comparative respect that Ian Fleming's James Bond enjoyed (appearing…

Did The Executioner pretty much create this genre as we know it?
Obviously, there were paperback adventure heroes in the 50s and 60s, such as Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm and Richard S. Prather's Shell Scott (who, like Race Bannon, got his physical appearance from actor Jeff Chandler). But I get the impression those…

The best Men's Adventure hero was probably The Inquisitor
He worked for the Church Militant, the Vatican's Black Ops department., and had to do penance every time he killed a Russian spy (or fucked one). This series was written by a pseudonymous Martin Cruz Smith, who later achieved some success with NIGHT WING and…

Is The Executioner the ony example of . . .
. . . an inferior source inspiring a superior rip-off? When Gerry Conway introduced The Punisher as a villain in The Amazing Spider-Man, the character was nothing more than Mack Bolan in a leotard. He eventually got more obsessive than even Bolan ever was, and Garth Ennis…

I'm not entirely sure that SHAFT was "cynical and calculated," mainly because it came pretty early in the genre and was based on a fairly popular series of detective novels.

It's a great bleak noir that, like the last half of THE MACK, is more a "real movie" that happens to be about black people, but it was certainly marketed as Blaxploitation at the time.

Only with my mind, Submit Your Own.

Yes, Ryder has boobs. Always has, at least since puberty. A friend who literally bumped into her on the street in 1989 was surprised at just how large her breasts and butt appeared to be, as she usually dressed to hide amplitude in movie roles.

On thing that Lazenby doesn't get enough credit for is that he seemed as physically capable as (young) Connery or Craig; he really throws himself into the fight scenes.

I suspect the "pool boy" is supposed to be the young Connery . . .
. . . circa DR. NO, or even his bodybuilding days. It's not a very good likeness (or a good painting), but the eyebrows kind of give it away.

Yeah, the film makes it pretty clear that she's his daughter.

I didn't. The Cursed VHS tape in the American version looked like a slickly produced Nine Inch Nails video, with nothing of the haunting quality of the Japanese version, with those dim figures dragging themslves across what might have been a beach. I missed the truly disturbing image of the inexplicable pointing…

I wondered if the dad was gay after seeing the film, but this is one case where I think the book really does illuminate what the film meant, rather than there being differing possible interpretations (such as whether Eli acquired Hakan as a boy or an adult, with what that implies for Oskar). I think this is partly…

The movie definitely intends to give you the impression that Hakan began his relationship with with Eli when he was Oskar's age, and that Oskar may well end up like him. The director has said as much in interviews. He doesn't insist on the interpretation, and says he also included stuff in Hakan's characterization…

What Bucky said. Back in the 70s, Playboy was paying 50 cents a word for short fiction. That was when Analog was paying five cents and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was paying three cents a word. An average typed page has 275-325 words on it. The average genre short story is about 5,000-8,000 words. …

Phel has the right of it. Rumor has it (and while this may be a totally scurrilous and untrue rumor, I'm not just making it up, but have heard/read it from several sources) that she had all her teeth pulled at a very early age, and that she her ability to remove her dentures greatly facilitates her skill at oral…

What the Hell, Dragon Dynasty?
I had a suspicioon they hadn't restored this, since they were using the bland new title Miramax gave it in the late 90s (whereas, when they restored The Tai Chi Master, they called it that rather than Twin Warriors). I have no idea why Miramax thought most of the Jet Li films they…

Not only does a baby die in The Heroic Trio, but it dies because the film's heroine's are fighting and one of them accidentally drops and its head is pierced by a nail! Also, later in the film, Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung come upon a cage of cute children in the villainous eunuch sorceror's underground lair (the…

I love his work on Animal Man. It was the first thing of his I ever read, and nothing has really compared to the experience. Sure, Doom Patrol was more surreal, The Invisbiles more ambitious, but I never found either to be as fun or as ultimately moving. What really gets me is the way the last issue his run should…