The Movie: "Barfly" by Charles Bukowski

 

(pb; 1987, 2006: screenplay)

Review

Bukowski’s character-driven, sometimes (suitably) booze-setting-chaotic screenplay maintains the warm, fisticuffs-brave tone of Bukowski’s other written work, a successful, charming genre-transitional effort that paid off with a truly independent, frak-Hollywood film with stellar, lots-o’-heart and distinctive characters. Worth seeking out, excellent.

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The resulting film, directed by Barbet Schroeder, was released stateside on October 16, 1987.

Mickey Rourke played Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s fictionalized self. Faye Dunaway played Wanda Wilcox. J.C.Quinn played Jim, daytime bartender for the Golden Horn Bar. Frank Stallone played Eddie, the Golden Horn’s nighttime bartender.

Sandy Martin played Janice, one of the Golden Horn’s barflies. Roberta Bassin played Lilly, another Golden Horn barfly. Gloria LeRoy, billed as Gloria Leroy, played Grandma Moses, an elderly oral-sex-leaning prostitute. Pruitt Taylor Vince played Joe. Book and screenplay author Charles Bukowski played an uncredited Bar Patron.

Alice Krige played Tully, a publisher. Jack Nance played Tully’s “Detective”.  

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

 

(pb; 1973)

From the back cover

“Marian Rolfe, her husband Ben and their 12-year-old son David find a neglected mansion that can be theirs for the summer. It all seems absolutely perfect, but there is one hitch. . .”

 

Review

Marasco’s slow-build, low-key horror tale about a malevolent house slowly tearing a family apart is good, its relatable characters, descriptions of the house falling somewhere between a then-modern (early Seventies) feel with a touch of late nineteenth-century/early twentieth century nostalgia and atmosphere—this latter element is subtle but  effective in giving Burnt an especially classic spookhouse feel, much like novels like James Herbert’s David Ash series (Haunted; The Ghosts of Sleath; and Ash) and especially Richard Matheson’s Hell House, 1971). The ending is open-ended (and possibly disappointing for some readers), with an equally low-key and notably-different-than-the-1976-film finish, but the film ending (more striking and effective) lacks the sense of blissful revelation that one of key characters experiences in those moments. Highly recommended read for those who appreciate quiet character-explorations, an emphasis on atmosphere, and sometimes-subtle-shift thrills.

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The film version, true to the book's atmosphere and characters, was released stateside on October 18, 1976. It was directed by Dan Curtis, who co-wrote the screenplay with William F. Nolan.

Karen Black played Marian Rolf (an alteration of the book-version surname Rolfe). Oliver Reed played Ben Rolf. Lee Montgomery, billed as Lee H. Montgomery, played David Rolf. Bette Davis, who found Reed “loathsome” in real life, played Aunt Elizabeth.

Eileen Heckart played Roz Allardyce. Burgess Meredith played Arnold “Brother” Allardyce. Dub Taylor played Walker, the Allardyces’ surly handyman. Anthony James played the creepy Chauffeur.

Zombies Anonymous written and illustrated by Malcolm Johnson

 

(pb; 2021:  graphic novel)

From the back cover

“Witness the zombie apocalypse like never before, told never before, told through the point of view of the undead in recovery.”

 

Review

Written and illustrated by Johnson, this fast-moving ten-minute and short read is narrated by various cognizant zombies (“biters”) in an “incident” (read: death/zombification) recovery group whose stories are shown while their recovery group session is not.

The biters talk about how many days it’s been since they’ve bitten. Their voice-overs are sprinkled with quoted lyrics (e.g., Leonard Cohen, The Mars Volta), and the illustrations—basic, spare in relative detail, more effective for being so—make effective use of red (as well as black and white) and dark, sometimes red-splash humor.

Anonymous, an entertaining undead-themed, quick-read graphic novel with a fun wrinkle placed within familiar storylines, is worth your time.

City Primeval by Elmore Leonard

 

(pb; 1980)

From the back cover

“Clement Mansell knows how easy it is to get away with murder. The crazed killer is back on the Detroit streets—thanks to some nifty courtroom moves by his crafty looker of a lawyer—and he’s feeling invincible enough to execute a crooked Motown judge. Homicide Detective Raymond Cruz thinks the Oklahoma Wildman crossed the line long before this latest outrage, and he’s determined to see that the psycho does not slip through the legal system’s loopholes a second time. But that means a good cop is going to have to play somewhat fast and loose with the rules—in order to maneuver Mansell into a wild Midwest showdown that he won’t be walking away from.”

 

Review

City’s modern-day cowboy Cruz and his law-enforcement associates face off against a sociopathic, brazen, and murderous criminal (Clement Mansell) whose low-life wiliness allows him to slip out of situations that would normally land another criminal in prison for decades. Leonard’s writing, at his best, is simultaneously slick, action- taut clever, with loquacious dialogue (but tightly edited), with a raw unpredictability thrown into the mix, and City reflects all these qualities. You know there’s going to be a showdown between Cruz and Mansell, just a question of where and when, and when it comes, it’s a doozy of a finale for a book that’s worth owning.

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City Primeval became the basis for FX channel’s upcoming limited series Justified: City Primeval, a continuation/spin-off of their 2010-15 show Justified, featuring Leonard’s book- and story-recurrent lawman character, Raylan Givens (starting with Leonard’s 1993 novel Pronto) in place of Raymond Cruz. As with the 2010-15 series, Timothy Olyphant played Givens. Justified: City Primeval is scheduled to begin airing on FX on July 18, 2023.

Cellars by John Shirley

 

(pb; 1982)

From the back cover

“Flesh for Satan.

“In a deserted subway tunnel far below the city, a young woman is ritually slashed to pieces. . . In an apartment building across town, a little boy, seething with demonic urges, lures a friend down into the sub-basement. . . On shadowed streets, hordes of shrieking children are stalking human sacrifices for him.

“Horror beneath the city.

“Evil has erupted from the pits of Hell, its blessed minions hungering for the flesh and blood of terrified millions. A city is clutched in the dripping talons of unspeakable horror, devoured in the nightmare battle between the forces of good. . . and the invincible armies of eternal darkness.”

 

Review

Cellar is an Old School/1980s horror novel that harkens back to the time when visiting Times Square could be a dangerous, overtly grimy and thrilling experience. In it, writer and researcher Carl Lanyard, is hired by his morally dubious and mysterious publisher (Trismegestes) to be an “occult consultant” to the police to help them solve a string of bizarre, especially nasty murders that hide deeper, darker and more ancient secrets. Like many novels of this period, Cellar is thick-vivid with New York-centric description, detailing its slime and charms, human and beyond.

If you’re familiar with this era of genre writing, you may well see where this cinematic, entertaining and well-written B-flick (and character-impelled) story is going, but it’s a joyously, unrepentantly gory, smutty, and hallucination-riddled ride with a darkly hilarious vibe, one worth checking out, especially if you’re a fan of William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel Falling Angel (and its resulting 1987 movie Angel Heart), Clive Barker’s 1984 Books of Blood Vol. 1 story “The Midnight Meat Train” (and its 2008 media-leap spawn film of the same name), and the Jack Cardiff-helmed The Mutations (1974; aka The Freakmaker).