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Bloody NEL: The Omega Point by George Zebrowski (1974)
On first glance, the back cover blurb for this one suggests a kind of post-apocalyptic variation on Edgar Rice Burroughs style science fantasy, but venturing inside, it soon becomes clear that George...
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Bloody NEL: Real-Time World by Christopher Priest (1976)
You know that feeling, particularly common to SF paperbacks, when you begin reading a back cover blurb and think, “gosh, this sounds like one hell of a story”, only to reach the third or fourth...
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Bloody NEL: To Outrun Doomsday by Kenneth Bulmer (1975)
Last but not least in our quartet of ‘70s NEL SF gear, here we have another superlative cover illustration from Ray Feibush. It’s the sense of perspective provided by the little fighting man on the...
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Pre-War Horror:Series Introduction.
I’ll admit, I’ve been at a loss when it comes to trying to find a good name for the new review strand I’m currently itching to instigate.‘Pre-Code Horror’ was my initial concept, and it certainly...
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Pre-War Horror: The Unknown (Todd Browning, 1927)
A title card at the very start of Tod Browning’s ‘The Unknown’ informs us that, “this is a story they tell in Madrid… it’s a story they say is true”. I have no idea whether or not the genesis of ‘The...
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...I'm going to change it to "Post War Thrills". No particular reason - just sounds cooler and broadens the scope a bit. Hope nobody minds.
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Pre-War Thrills: Doctor X (Michael Curtiz, 1932)
“It’s peculiar that the left deltoid muscle should be missing. […] Gentlemen, it wasn’t torn out - this is cannibalism!” Well, that sure put the cat among the pigeons. The speaker is Dr Jerry Xavier...
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Pre-War Thrills: The Mask of Fu Manchu (Charles Brabin, 1932)
So, to get this out of the way right from the outset: if you’re going to take an interest in the pulp fiction or popular literature of the early 20th Century, you’re going to encounter a lot of...
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VHS Purgatory/Exploito All’Italiana: The Squeeze (Antonio Margheriti, 1978)
Not to be confused with the excellent, Stacy Keach-starring British crime movie of the same name, THIS Squeeze was shot in New York with a largely American cast by our old friend “Anthony M. Dawson”....
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Deathblog: Janine Reynaud (1930-2018)
I was sad to hear today, via Tim Lucas’s blog, of the death of Janine Reynaud, who has apparently passed away at her home in Texas at the age of 87.Born in Paris, Reynaud is best known amongst Jess...
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Pan’s People: Gideon’s Month by J.J. Marric (1960)
I’m afraid I’ll be heading off on holiday for a while through May and June (no prizes for guessing where). As such, I’ll be leaving you with a few pre-scheduled posts, offering up some recent additions...
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Soul Pulp: Shaft Among The Jews by Ernest Tidyman (Corgi, 1972)
Adding to my small collection of blaxploitation paperbacks, we have what I believe is the second of seven Shaft novels written by the character’s creator Ernest Tidyman, and… yes, the title here’s a...
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Bloody NEL: The Unpleasant Professionof Jonathan Hoag by Robert A. Heinlein...
I couldn’t move on from my recent survey of New English Library science fiction titles without a tip of the hat to Robert Heinlein, given that NEL reprinted a fairly vast swathe of his output during...
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Bloody NEL: Hook: Virility Gene by Tully Zetford (1975)
You know that feeling when you pull a promising looking book off the shelf in Oxfam and think, “what the actual fuck”?I’m not sure whether the gentleman portrayed on the cover (‘Hook’ himself,...
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Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up: Edge of Time by David Grinnell (Ace, 1958)
Just time to squeeze in a few new editions to this blog’s long neglected survey of psychedelic SF cover illustrations – beginning with two examples of the form produced before the term ‘psychedelia’...
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Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up: The Star of Life by Edmond Hamilton (Crest, 1959)
All those squiggly, expressionistic doodle-lines and the distinctively steel spear-head styled rocket ship on the back of this wrap-around cover clearly identify it as the work of ubiquitous, and...
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Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up: Asylum Earth by Bruce Elliot (Belmont, 1968)
Not much to say here, other than 1) the artwork – attributed online to Jerome Podwill– is pretty great, and 2) if the back cover copy is anything to go by, Bruce Elliot’s take on life in 1991 seems to...
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Two-Fisted Tales: The Texts of Festival by Mick Farren (Mayflower, 1973)
Lurking somewhere to the left of Michael Butterworth’s Time of the Hawklords on my bookshelves, we find another example of the surprisingly fertile cross-over between paperback science fiction and...
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Deathblog: Maria Towers / Rohm (1945-2018)
Somebody up there seems to have decided that 2018 is the year in which the surviving stars of Jess Franco’s ‘60s films are to leave us, and, following the death of Janine Reynaud last month, I was...
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You Cannot Fart Around With Love: A Tribute to Fredric Hobbs (1931-2018)
“Even the distributor, who’s a very smart guy, said, ‘Everybody goes nuts at the end! Is that what you always do, Hobbs? In every movie you make everybody always goes nuts at the end!’ I said, ‘No, for...
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