Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #36--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 28--"...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #36--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 28--"...:   The final chapter of the 1912 novel "Tarzan of the Apes" brings us the threat of vigilante murder and a pair of marriage proposa...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Molle Mystery Theater: "Lady in the Morgue" 5/15/45

A woman's body is stolen from the morgue. The morgue attendant and--later--an undertaker are murdered. It's up to private eyes Crane and O'Malley to find the killer in this goofy but entertaining mystery. 

This episode is a recording from when it was re-run on Mystery Playhouse, an Armed Forces Network show hosted by Peter Lorre. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Thirteenth Hour

 

Read/Watch 'em in Order #122

The penultimate entry in the Whistler film series is the last one staring Richard Dix, Sadly, bad health and alcoholism led to his death in 1947.

But at least his acting career ended on a strong note. The Thirteenth Hour (1947) is another strong, well-written entry in the Whistler series, with Dix giving yet another fine performance.

In this one, he plays a truck driver named Steve Reynolds. Steve's life is going well. He's engaged to a pretty widowed mom named Eileen (Karen Morley) and he's recently paid off his truck. 

But a moment of bad luck changes everything. His truck is run off the road by a reckless driver, but no one else sees the other vehicle. He has alcohol on his breath because he drank a glass of punch at Eileen's birthday party before hitting the road. A hitchhiker he had picked up disappears and can't back up his story. And, perhaps worst of all, the motorcycle cop who shows up after the crash also had a thing of Eileen.

The end result is Steve getting his license suspended for six months, which means he has to hire other drivers to stay in business. But when a driver calls out sick, Steve takes a chance on getting back behind the wheel of the truck to make that night's delivery.

He figures all he has to worry about is getting pulled over by the cops. But what happens is a tad bit worse than that. A hijacker knocks him out, uses the truck to kill the motorcyle cop and leaves Steve to take the blame.

So the movie becomes a "man on the run to find the real killer" story.  It's a well-used plot devise, but that's because it makes for a good mystery when well-written. And The Thirteenth Hour is indeed well-written, with a logical plot and several unexpected plot twists. 

I actually don't want to give too detailed a summary because I don't want to spoil the nicely done twists for anyone. Suffice to say that Steve and those helping him, which includes a good friend, Eileen and Eileen's son, act in an intelligent and logical manner when pursing leads to find the real killer. They also keep their heads to outsmart the bad guy when the situation turns dangerous during the climax. 

The bad guy's identity is a real surprise (though many alert viewers will tumble to it a few minutes before the film reveals it) and he also acts with reasonable intelligence, making him an effective villain. 

I like this one a lot and it runs neck-to-neck with Mysterious Intruder as my favorite in the series so far.

Of the eight Whistler films, I have six on DVD (recorded off of TCM a few years ago). The Thirteenth Hour one of the two I don't have on disc, so I watched it on YouTube. I'm posting that YouTube video below. But I don't know what the copyright situation is for the movie and don't know if it might one day get pulled. So, as I stated with the other Whistler movie shared here, if my future biographers visit this post in the future (while researching my influence that made me the cultural savior of civilization) and the post below isn't active--it's NOT MY FAULT!

King of the Hill

 

cover art by Joe Kubert

The U.S.S. Stevens stories, written and drawn by Sam Glanzman, appeared periodically as back-up stories in most of DC's war comics during the 1970s. Based on Glanzman's experiences aboard the real-life Stevens (a destroyer) during World War II, the stories are fictionalized vignettes of events he saw or heard about.  They are excellent and often heart-felt tales that talk about the boredom, terror, danger and tragidy of war.

"King of the Hill" appeared in Star Spangled War Stories #174 (October 1973) and is a great example of just how good these stories are. It begins with the Stevens finishing up a mission shelling a Japanese facility on a remote island. (I love the the caption here: "We were lying off Borneo shelling an oil refinery or perhaps it was a storage facility... Who knew... few crew members knew or cared about the target.")

Afterwards, they stop at a supply depot to re-stock on ammunition, with a petty officer "volunteering" some of his men to fill out the ammo detail that goes ashore. But once there, someone notices that, aside from ammo, there's quite a few crates of fresh food lying about.

They are told that they can take ONLY the ammo. But somehow, 15 crates of fresh food end up being stored below decks on the Stevens. How did that happen?

At first, the Marine sergeant in charge of the depot is seriously ticked off and uses words such as "#%&!$%" and "*&@!#!$!."  But then a small apes is seen taking a crate. The poor animal effectively frames himself for the crime. 

A Marine climbs to the top of the ammo crate pile to playfully wrestle with the ape. At first, both Marines and sailors enjoy the show, laughing at the antics. But then the situation takes an abrupt and tragic turn when the ape loses his temper.

Enraged, the ape attacks the Marine with tooth and claw. Before it can be shot dead, it has killed the Marine.

And that's it. A man who had survived the campaign on Gaudalcanal dies senseless because he wanted to play with a big monkey. And that's war. However justified a country may be to go to war--however well-led the military may be--people are going to die for stupid reasons. 

That's it for now. Next week, we'll lighten things up a bit as we accompany Casper the Friendly Ghost to school.

Cover Cavalcade

 

From 1966. Real-life barber shops need to take note of this.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #35: Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 27: "...

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She/He MADE Me!: ANGELA MAKES TIM WATCH: Sabrina (1995)

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Lone Ranger: "Silver Summit" 1/21/44

Rigor McClure is the toughest construction foreman ever to lay down track, but even he might need the help of the Lone Ranger in order to finish building a line through rough territory in the face of sabotage.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Deadly Orchid

 

cover art by Walter de Maris

The excellent Thrilling Detectives website compares Trixie Meehan and Mike Harris to a couple of television shows that ran decades after these stories were published. Moonlighting and Remington Steele both used the premise of a male/female detective team in which they constantly argued with one another, but still managed to get the job done. With perhaps a dollop of romantic tension tossed in.

It's become a well-used trope, but it was probably much fresher when the first of the 16 Harris/Meehan stories was published in 1933. (Most of the others were also published in the '30s, though the last appeared in 1951).

T.T. Flynn (who wrote a lot of pulp stories and is mostly remembered for his Westerns) was the author and he proves that even if a trope such as this is used a lot, it can still be the basis for good stories. Tropes and cliches become common specifically because, when used well, they can still be a part of effective storytelling.

Anyway, the first story is "The Deadly Orchid," appearing in the April 15, 1933 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly. We meet Mike Harris, a detective with the Blaine Agency, as he is tasked with catching a beautiful blackmailer known as the Orchid. She currently has some letters written by a wealthy and influencial banker that are worth at least a quarter-million dollars.

Mike is to go undercover, checking into the same hotel at which the Orchid is staying, posing as a rich oil man to catch her interest. To Mike's annoyance, Trixie Meehan is given the job of posing as his wife. But, though Mike claims to dislike Trixie, he admits to himself that she has "forget-me-not eyes, a knock 'em dead face, and a clinging vine manner that covered concentrated hell. She has a razor tongue, muscles like steel springs, a brain that made me dizzy at times, and absolutely no fear." She also carries a pistol and a pen that squirts tear gas. 

The ensuing story, as Mike and Trixie dip into a large expense account to set up their cover as rich idiots, is a good one. The humor needed to make their adversarial relationship work is there and the plot itself is solid and logical. This has been the only story from the series I've been able to locate, so I do wish that Trixie had been a little more involved in Mike's plan to outwit and trap their target, but she does get to step in to capture a couple of thugs who were getting away from Mike. In the end, she does feel like she is as good a detective as Mike claims she is. If I can ever dig up other stories in the series, I'll be curious to see if she ever gets to be more proactive in coming up with clever plans. 

Heck, here's yet another pulp series that needs to be reprinted. Once again, I'M WAITING!

"The Deadly Orchid" can be read online HERE.

An Adventure with a 40-Year Time Out

 

cover art by Gil Kane

For a few years in the early 1970s, Marvel Comics held the rights to do comic book stories about Doc Savage. Doc's book, A comic book series that began in 1972 ran 8 issues, while a black-and-white magazine premiered in 1975 and also ran 8 issiues. Both series were good--it's a pity it didn't run longer.

Naturally, Marvel also brought Doc into the Marvel Universe, using time travel shenanigans to team him up with the Thing in Marvel Two-in-One #21 and Spider Man in Giant Size Spider Man # 3 (January 1975). Undoubtably, both stories were written in part to help plug Doc's own books, but both were entertaining stories in their own right. Especially the Spider Man tale. 

And that's the story we are looking at today. Written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru, the action picks up in then-modern day, with Spider Man checking out a light near an office building that is scheduled to be demolished. He runs into an alien woman who at first speaks her own alien tongue, but soon has her translator device calibrated to English.

She needs help to solve a problem left over from when the building was constructed back in 1934. To explain, she uses some super-science to show Spider Man what happened 40 years back.

Doc Savage had recieved a note asking for help at the building's construction site. He and his men go there and foil an attempted assassination of Mayor La Guardia, but Doc realizes the note is written on paper not made on Earth. Whatever the call for help is referring to, it wasn't the assassination attempt. That was just a coincidence.

From a story construction point of view, foiling the assassin was a way for the story to introduce Doc and his five assistants to us, as well as highlight just how capable they are. It's an effective trick, accomplishing its goal while keeping the action moving.

Anyway, Doc and his team head back to the building. But at this point, we are brought back to 1974, where a electricity-based giant appears, speaking the same language DeSinna (the alien girl) was speaking earlier while he apparently tries to kill her. After a fun fight sequence illustrated with Ross Andru's usual skill, Spider Man manages to at least temporarily banish the creature by short-circuiting it with an electic-powered jack hammer.

DeSinna then pulls up her image of 1934 again. Doc and his team have returned to the site and met DeSinna. We learn she's a scientist from another dimension. Her story is complicated (possibly a bit over-complicated for a story this length), but it boils down to her coming to Earth in pursuit of an insane lab asssitant named Terros, who has been powered-up after a lab accident. DeSinna has arranged to arrive on Earth before Terros arrives, hoping he can be stopped as soon as he arrives. 

Terros then puts in his appearance. It's the second time we've seen him, but chronologically, this is indeed his initial arrival on Earth. There's another cool fight scene (I have always admired Andru's ability to choroegraph cool comic book action), with Doc eventually using his scientific knowledge and a secret weapon quickly fetched from his HQ to trap Terros in the building's cornerstone.

Which brings us back to 1974, where the impending demolition of the building is threatening to release Terros. So Spider Man... picks up a jack hammer, shatters the cornerstone and let's Terros loose?

 It turns out that Terros is the good guy and DeSinna is the bad guy--something Spidey had deduced over the course of the adventure. Terros snatches up the girl and they disappear, presumably going back to their own dimension.

Spidey swings off, thinking that it is changing times and changing attitudes to allow him to figure out DeSinna was the villain after Doc and his team saw her simply as a Damsel in Distress.

I do enjoy this story, though I can nitpick a few things about it. I'm not sure I buy that Doc and his team would have been so quick to trust DeSinna. They were experienced adventurers and the concept of the Femme Fatale would not have been new to them. And, though I understand that one of the story's purposes was to introduce readers to Doc, having his whole team present did make the 1934 portions of the story a bit overcrowded with characters. 

Also, DeSinna's back story, told from her point-of-view, turns out to be at least partially untrue, but we never get to learn the truth. What was going on with her and DeSinna? Can we even be sure Spidey was right and DeSinna was indeed the villain? There's simply not enough information for us to know.

But the positives outwiegh the negatives. I've already mentioned how cool Ross Andru's art is. And having the story jump back and forth between the two time periods was clever and well-done. 

It's too bad that Doc Savage's time at Marvel didn't see more commercial success. He had himself from fun adventures during that time.

Next week, we'll go sailing aboard the U.S.S. Stevens.