I know there’s a nursing shortage, but that’s no excuse for hiring werewolves. Bosco and Lanny trade smartass remarks as I attempt in my own poor way to invoke the shade of the late, great Gregory McDonald.

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 1-28-12

My literary agent is Bouchercon 2012′s own Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Take the elevator to the eighth floor. Avoid the stairs.

I’ve tweaked up the manuscript some more. Bosco gets tied to a bed naked and tickled silly. Who should walk in but his wife’s ex-husband? As good a time as any to be swallowed by a Mezcal worm.

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 1-21-12

Bosco Hoël, small-town lawyer and wiseass hero of DEAD MAN’S ACT, is back, this time with a one-legged wife and a three-breasted Mexican maid. Someone has murdered sleep for Bosco. Local unsolved murders keep invading his dreams—murders with himself cast as the killer. Bosco and his amputee wife run a three-legged race with insidious forces seeking to destroy them.

My literary agent is Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Casey Anthony video blog script.

So this is my first video diary. It is October 13 which is a Thursday Twenty-Eleven. (Laughs eh heh) And I’m just starting to figure out my new computer and, I don’t know, I guess I’m liking it so far. It’s obviously a different… ball game for me, so I’ve never have used this before, so… I guess these will be as tedious as my audio recordings have been. I guess to start off this one, um, just a few updates from the last few days there really hasn’t been all too much going on except now for this and… and I’m extremely excited, extremely excited that I’ll be able to Skype and obviously keep a videolog, take some pictures and that I have something that I can finally call… mine. (Sigh) I dunno…. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to call something mine, and now that I have something even, you know, silly as saying that I have a computer… and a camera and a phone, granted, and I wouldn’t have the phone without __________ and I’ve actually now paid for my own computer. The camera was a gift but these are things that are mine and, I don’t have to, I don’t know, that I don’t have to give back. It’s kinda nice finally being able to say that I have some belongings that are mine, that I’ll be able to take with me after I leave here next year. Hm, It’s kinda funny to think about, actually. I know it’s gonna be a while since I leave. I’ll be here for many, many months more even if I’m only here for six months, even if I get off probation early. I’ll still be here at least until … February? The end of February? Seven months March my birthday, it’s just, either way. And whether it’s six months or it’s a year from now, or, muh, oh, year from middle of August. (Yeuh.) It’s just been such a blessing in so many ways. And now I‘m someplace I have someone to talk to when I’m by myself and I’m not bothering the poor dog, whom I’ve adopted, and I love, and he’s as much my dog as any of the other pets I’ve ever had. You know _________the families I’ve ever had if not moreso. So, I don’t know. I don’t know whether to look directly at myself or look up, or… ( heh) oh, man, I dunno. Just a little surreal how much things have changed since July and how many things…haven’t changed? ….But the good thing is that things are starting to look up and things are starting to change in a good way…Hm, just hope they stay, that things stay good and that they only get better. ….. Only get better. So this is the end of my first video log I’ll probably do another one later. Maybe _________ Maybe I’ll bring the dog, who knows. But this is again the first of many and I’m looking forward to this. It’s a little scary because I hate being on camera, but, I dunno. I need to conquer that fear at some point, and this is a good start. So here’s something. The end of the first. Just the beginning.
I just pierced my nose last night…very excited and cuffed my ear…boo, very funny.

Now and then it’s a good thing to challenge yourself. For a long time I’ve wanted to write a ghost story. Not in imitation of Stephen King. Not even in imitation of Henry James. Rather, a truly original novel-length ghost story. Having completed AMERICAN BANSHEE, I’m proud of my novel, if I do say so. Not sinfully proud, I hope. Proud in the sense of being imbued with a sincere feeling of satisfaction in the accomplishment of a goal.

AMERICAN BANSHEE is the story of “Pastor Mike,” a phony exorcist who plans to make a killing from those he looks upon as ignorant rubes in rural Missouri. Traveling with his girlfriend he soon encounters Jeb and his family, latter-day pioneers who live off the land. Or are they ghosts from a bygone era? In any event, there’s a “haint” on the old homestead, a familiar spirit or demon known as a Banshee who holds the family in thrall. Jeb is counting on Pastor Mike to free him and his brood from the Banshee’s spell, but Mike is more interested in selling out to the powers of darkness. A dramatic series of terrifying events convinces him to repent of his evil intentions and sinful deeds and to rescue Jeb and the others. But is his redemption complete enough and sincere enough to protect him during the exorcism? Or will the forces of evil destroy him and those he loves before he can cast out the demon?

AMERICAN BANSHEE took me fourteen months to complete. I know that’s a pitiably slow rate, but I’ve been busy. Busy with other important things like running a law practice without running it into the ground while enmired in this post-George W. slash-and-burn Great Depression reprise we laughingly refer to as “the economy.” But, as Ben Franklin himself once said, “Out of adversity comes opportunity.” And I seem to remember reading somewhere that screenwriter Joe Esterhaus was under intense financial pressure when he wrote SHOWGIRLS.

As the wordsmith pundits say, if you sit down to write on a regular basis, and keep doing so despite all the petty tyrants of day-to-day urgency screaming in your ear that you’re a fool, eventually you’ll have yourself a novel. And, on 12/31/11 at 11:28 PM, that’s exactly what happened to me: my water broke and there between my legs I had myself a brand-spanking new novel. I eagerly gnawed through the umbilical cord and shipped off the new arrival to my literary agent for swaddling and circumcision.

Don’t let the birth metaphor fool you; I don’t look back upon the novels I’ve written as my children. Not even unacknowledged bastard offspring. Maria and I have been blessed with four children, of whom both of us are exceedingly proud. No, I suffered no post-partum depression after having hammered out another bloated, red-faced screaming opus—nine so far: St. Agnes’ Eve, Private Showings, Wicked King Dick, Devil’s Toll, Conjurer’s Oath, Heartbalm, Dead Man’s Act, Two Shot, and American Banshee, written roughly in that order. After finishing the appellate brief I’m working on today I intend to resume work on what promises to be my tenth novel: the unfortunately titled NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE, the first 86 pages of which are offered for your perusal on my 9/13/10 blog post. I relish getting back to a first-person smartass narrative voice, which is my true home.

Only 2k words to go and AMERICAN BANSHEE is finished! Tomorrow I hope to have the MS in the capable hands of my literary agent Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York City.

By the way, please visit Amazon Kindle and check out my four novels on sale there. You won’t be disappointed!

Just in time for Christmas, as my gift to all of you, here are the first ten chapters of my novel HEARTBALM, complete and unexpurgated, lovingly recorded by yours truly.

CHAPTER ONE: AND NOW A WORD FROM MY SPONSOR. PB-Heartbalm-01

CHAPTER TWO: THE ITALIANATE PRONUNCIATION. HEARTBALM Chapter Two

CHAPTER THREE: PERMUTATIONS AND COMBINATIONS. HEARTBALM Chapter Three

CHAPTER FOUR: COLD CALLING. HEARTBALM Chapter Four

CHAPTER FIVE: THE CURSE OF THE HOLSTEIN WOMEN. HEARTBALM Chapter Five The Curse of the Holstein Women

CHAPTER SIX: MEN’S TRIBUTES TO WOMEN. HEARTBALM Chapter Six Men’s Tributes to Women

CHAPTER SEVEN: A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART. HEARTBALM Chapter Seven A Man After My Own Heart

CHAPTER SEVEN, PART TWO: HEARTBALM Podcast Chapter Seven part Two

CHAPTER EIGHT: RAPED OVER THE COALS. HEARTBALM Chapter Eight Raped Over the Coals

CHAPTER NINE: THE TWO GERASIMI. HEARTBALM Chapter Nine The Two Gerasimi

CHAPTER NINE, PART TWO. HEARTBALM Chapter Nine Part Two Podcast

CHAPTER TEN: PUSSY CRICK. HEARTBALM Chapter Ten Pussy Crick

CHAPTER TEN, PART TWO: HEARTBALM Chapter Ten Part Two Pussy Crick

Enjoy.

When I first learned that the guy singing the theme song in that perennial holiday favorite HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS was Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft, the same guy who did the voice for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes’ beloved cereal mascot Tony the Tiger, I pictured him going out to lunch with Boris Karloff at Fatburger (“please refrain from dancing on the tables”), the two of them taking a break from their Grinch gigs to talk over old times. I’d love to have been eavesdropping on their conversation from the adjoining booth. It would have been the mid-sixties, so Karloff might have shared some funny stories from back when he was hosting the ironically-titled anthology series THRILLER on television, and Ravenscroft could have regaled Karloff with tales of what it was like to work with stars as diverse as Jack Benny and Elvis.

Speaking of Jack Benny, Bob Hope is credited with saying that when they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor’s Orphanage, he shot both his parents and moved in.

LITTLE JIMMY: Bob Hope? Jack Benny? Just how old IS this Malachi Stone guy?
MR. ANSWER MAN: Plenty old, Little Jimmy. Plenty old.
LITTLE JIMMY: And he smells funny, too. Not funny ha ha, funny old.
MR. ANSWER MAN: You’ll get used to it just like I did. Say, that reminds me of a joke. It’s kind of a Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts party record joke. It seems there was this elderly couple and the old lady complained that her legs were always getting cold in bed. The old man told her to catch a skunk, make a pet out of it and sleep with it between her thighs every night. She says, what about the smell? He says, the skunk’ll get used to it just like I did. Pretty funny, huh, Little Jimmy?

Someone once observed that the classic comedians like Benny and Hope were high concept in that their personas were defined by two or three simple traits. Benny was a vain, stingy man and a lousy violin player. Hope was a coward and he liked girls.

Here’s my high-concept tag: I’m a lawyer and I write novels. Until I began formatting four of my earlier novels for Amazon Kindle–CONJURER’S OATH, DEVIL’S TOLL, PRIVATE SHOWINGS and WICKED KING DICK–I hadn’t looked at some of them in years. Revisiting books you wrote years ago has a strange déjà vu effect. It dredges up nostalgia in unpredictable ways. There’s that chapter in PRIVATE SHOWINGS I wrote the afternoon the kids came home from school during a blizzard and I had to walk them up the steep hill in foot-deep snow because the bus couldn’t take the grade. I remember sitting down at the word processor, my pant legs still dripping wet with melting snow, and beginning to write. And then there’s the romantic scene in the tower. I wrote that one the night before Pascha, working until three in the morning while Maria sat with her invalid mother. It was Maria I dreamed of as I wrote those words.

I don’t know how you other writers out there may feel about your own works but I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my novels. And I’m not much of a judge. One day I might cringe with embarrassment at something I’ve written, the next day I might swell with pride reading the same passage.

Personally, I was surprised at the prevalence of religious themes in my books. Theophanies and epiphanies pop up in the most unexpected places. All my little obsessions creep in as well: Neanderthal man, particle physics, father-son relationships, my home town–they’re all there, along with phony evangelists, sexual deviance, degradation and shame.

I’d hate having a psychiatrist deconstruct any one of these books of mine that are now posted for sale on Amazon Kindle. It’s like Xeroxing love letters you wrote to your wife and sending some flunky into the street to pass them out like handbills. The process of writing a novel, if you do it right, amounts to a critical invasion of your own privacy. Hence the Wal-Mart bag mask and all that silliness about having to conceal my identity.

Here’s a paradox: one wants to self-publicize to the right target audience and yet retain one’s privacy. When we started the law practice, brimming with the heady confidence that comes with inexperience, in addition to the lawyers’ old standby, the yellow pages, we experimented with various alternative modes of advertising. Specifically, we tried a billboard. For those of you fortunate enough never to have encountered the need for such vulgar self-promotion, please be advised that a one-year contract for billboard space costs about a bazillion dollars. And this particular billboard was blocked by some utility poles and wires and a big tree. Nevertheless we were so excited we parked across the street and took a picture. We drove a longer route home just so we could see the billboard lit up at night.

And do you know how many paying clients came to the office because of the billboard? A nice round number: zero. Oh, there was the crazy gay guy who dropped in without an appointment, spent an hour or so shooting the bull, promised to bring in his 89-year-old female companion to make a will, and never returned. And then there was the lunatic famous for riding his bicycle around town wearing nothing but a diaper and long hair like Cochise who walked in, welcomed us to the neighborhood, farted, turned around and left. Not to mention the hordes of salesmen who spotted the billboard, smelled a new prospect and dogpiled us. But clients? Nah.

We tried a newspaper advertisement. Page thirty. Response: a polite mention from one old woman at church that she had seen it. Thanks for noticing. Have a nice day. We tried a web site. This was back in the day when I lacked the skills to design my own. We hired a dude from our then internet service provider to design it. It cost around a thousand dollars in borrowed money and brought in hundreds of emails from people in virtually every jurisdiction where I am not licensed to practice law seeking free legal advice.

The point in all this, if there is one, is that we learned a lesson from our ill-fated forays into the world of advertising: you can spend a hell of a lot of money and get nothing in return. If you want your money’s worth, please consider buying DEVIL’S TOLL, PRIVATE SHOWINGS, CONJURER’S OATH and/or WICKED KING DICK on Amazon Kindle. You won’t be disappointed. I’d love to hear from you.

I’m still all cranked up after having prepared four of my “backlist” novels for publication on Amazon Kindle. All four–CONJURER’S OATH, DEVIL’S TOLL, PRIVATE SHOWINGS and WICKED KING DICK–are now live on Amazon and there have already been sales. A number of ace reviewers have graciously agreed to read one or more of these novels, for which I am truly grateful.

I’m not a tech guy so the process of self-publishing online seemed to me rather intimidating. However, by the time the weekend was drawing to a close I felt I had mastered the process. For those of you who might be contemplating doing the same and placing your magnum opus on Kindle for, one hopes, mass consumption and filthy lucre, I have prepared a flowchart of sorts outlining the process, in the form of an interview between MR. ANSWER MAN and his impertinent young ward, LITTLE JIMMY.

LITTLE JIMMY: Mr. Answer Man, how can I get my novel published on Amazon Kindle without laying out a red cent?

MR. ANSWER MAN: I’m glad you asked me that question, Little Jimmy. Here are the steps you should follow. First, write a novel. Finished? Good.

LITTLE JIMMY: I just got done writing a really swell novel, Mr. Answer Man. Now what?

MR. ANSWER MAN: Now’s where the real fun begins, Jittle Jimmy. I recommend removing all headers and footers. It’s easy: simply select Insert on your Word 7 toolbar and under the Header and Footer section select header and footer in turn and click on the “Remove Header” and “Remove footer” buttons.

LITTLE JIMMY: Now what, Mr. Answer Man?

MR. ANSWER MAN: Now save that novel of yours in Word. I use Word 7 but the formatting works better with Word 97-2003 (doc. instead of docx. format) so save it in both formats but work from doc. Now save the doc. document in plain text, select all, copy and paste back into Word 97-2003 and save again. That gets rid of most of the hidden detritus picked up from multiple word processors over the years and gets you a relatively clean text. Now let’s take this opportunity to shower together naked.

LITTLE JIMMY: All clean and pretty, Mr. Answer Man. What’s next?

MR. ANSWER MAN: Now go to:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17TIRUIVI

and work your way down the list. You will need to insert a page break at the end of every chapter. In Word, this means you hit Insert on the upper left of your screen and then click on “page break” at the upper left of your Toolbar, third selection from the top. Repeat this process as many times as necessary in order to insert a page break at the end of each chapter as well as after the title and author, copyright info, dedication, and whatever other “front matter” your book may contain. It tends to be a tedious process, and I’m told there’s a simpler way but I don’t know what it is.

LITTLE JIMMY: Boy, that WAS tedious, but I think I’m all finished. What’s next?

MR. ANSWER MAN: Got your page breaks done, Litle Jimmy? Good, now save in doc. again. Now for the fun part: selecting an image for the front cover. Make sure it’s a public domain image. Wikipedia provides some good sources for these materials here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources,

or you might prefer to Google “public domain” and photo, painting or image.

LITTLE JIMMY: What’s the big deal about pubic domain, Mr. Answer Man?

MR. ANSWER MAN: That’s PUBLIC domain, Little Jimmy, heh heh heh. You don’t want to get sued by some shyster over unauthorized or unlicensed commercial use of a copyrighted image, do you?

LITTLE JIMMY: No way, Mr. Answer Man. The whole idea of publishing this way is to get by dirt cheap.

MR. ANSWER MAN: That’s my boy. That’s why you want to be sure to check the website where the image in question appears for unequivocal language that it is in fact available for commercial use and is in the public domain. Don’t take any chances here. I recommend using the “Snipping Tool” in Word to take a screenshot of the webpage containing that language. Ever heard of the “Snipping Tool,” Little Jimmy?

LITTLE JIMMY: (clutching his privates and wincing) I never even know there WAS a “Snipping Tool,” Mr. Answer Man.

MR. ANSWER MAN: Unfamiliar with the “Snipping Tool”? Go to Start and type “snipping tool” into the “Search Programs and Files” field at the bottom of the left-hand column. While the webpage is displayed, click on Snipping Tool, select New and click on Full Screen Snip at the bottom of the drop-down. You will want to save the screenshot that appears for future protection should your use of a particular image ever be challenged.

Now save the image you have selected for your cover. Save it into My Pictures using .jpeg and then open it with Paint in Word. With a little practice you can resize, crop and add title language to the image fairly easily. Kindle prefers a larger image so when you resize try to get as close as possible to 1260 pixels on the longer side and then save again, always in .jpeg. At this point you might try posting the cover image with the title language on Facebook, see how it looks, e.g., does the title language stand out and does the image arrest the eye in thumbnail format? When you have finished, you might want to delete the cover image from Facebook.

LITTLE JIMMY: Can I use CFNM images for my cover, Mr. Answer Man?

MR. ANSWER MAN: Clothed female naked male? I like the way your mind works, Little Jimmy, but you should avoid images that might be considered pornographic, offensive or in questionable taste.

LITTLE JIMMY: Awww, shucks!

MR. ANSWER MAN: Even if you follow all my advice about public domain images you may still be hit with a cease-and-desist letter from some shyster. The only way to be absolutely sure is to create your own original image, which is what I recommend.

To insert the image into your document place your cursor in the upper left corner of the first page of the novel and on your Toolbar click Insert, click on Picture under Illustrations. You should be taken to the My Pictures folder in your Documents. Select your cover image. You can center your image by clicking on the image in your novel and on your Toolbar select Picture Tools, Format tab and clicking on the appropriate layout option.

LITTLE JIMMY: I found an image and got it centered at the beginning of my novel. Now what?

MR. ANSWER MAN: Now you need to create a table of contents out of hyperlinks. Here are some instructions on how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285059.

If you found those instructions as confusing as I did, try this: highlight each chapter heading in turn, click References on your Toolbar and under Table of Contents click Add Text. Repeat for each chapter heading and any epilogue your book may have. Next, position your cursor where you want the Table of Contents to appear. Then under References click the Table of Contents tab at the extreme right of your Toolbar and in the dropdown click Insert Table of Contents. The hyperlinks will appear as if by magic in the order in which you added them.

LITTLE JIMMY: Wow! That DID happen like magic, just the way you said it would, Mr. Answer Man. All of a sudden I’m getting excited!

MR. ANSWER MAN: Me too, Little Jimmy. Now for the Guide Items. Click on your cover image and then click on “Insert; Bookmark.” In the ‘Bookmark name:” field, type “cover” (without the quotes) and click “Add.” Move your cursor to the point where your book starts, click “Insert; Bookmark.” In the ‘Bookmark name:” field, type “Start” (without the quotes) and click “Add.” Move your cursor to the place where your Table of Contents starts, and click “Insert; Bookmark.” In the ‘Bookmark name:” field, type “TOC” (without the quotes) and click “Add.”Insert whatever back matter you choose to include, remembering to insert page breaks after each section of back matter. Did you fart?

LITTLE JIMMY: (singsong) Sor-ry!

MR. ANSWER MAN: Now save your document as .doc and also as Web Page filtered. To do this, click the Office button in Word, select Save As and click on Other Formats at the bottom of the dropdown. In the “Save as Type” field near the bottom, select “Web Page, Filtered” and save in that format. The resulting document will be used to build your book in the Mobipocket Creator which you can download here: mobipocket.com.

LITTLE JIMMY: I never downloaded anything before but… HERE GOES!

MR. ANSWER MAN: Open Mobipocket Creator. On the right-hand side, under “Import From Existing File,” select HTML document. Browse and insert your “Web Page, Filtered” file in the field marked “Choose a File.” Hit Import. On the left-hand side of the resulting screen select “Cover Image” and click on the button “Add a Cover Image” which after a couple of clicks will take you to your My Pictures file. There you will select your cover image. Click “Update” and your cover image will be uploaded.

LITTLE JIMMY: Gee, Mr. Answer Man, this stuff is easy peasy!

MR. ANSWER MAN: Don’t get cocky, Little Jimmy, you’re not done yet. Now on the Mobipocket Creator toolbar click Build, select standard compression and no encryption and press the Build button. You may then preview your book in the Mobipocket Reader, Kindle preview, or both. If you have not downloaded them, do so now. Mobipocket Creator will have created a file in My Documents entitled My Publications where the document you will submit to Kindle has been stored. It is the file with the blue book cover icon. After you open a free account on Kindle and go here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A37Z49E2DDQPP3

You may upload the file with the blue book cover icon once you have provided the necessary information on the online form which is fairly self-explanatory (“unless round is funny.”)

LITTLE JIMMY: I got the sly reference to RAISING ARIZONA, Mr. Answer Man.

MR. ANSWER MAN: In less than twenty-four hours your book should be live on Amazon Kindle, Little Jimmy. Good luck!

Harry Medved (brother to conservative pundit Michael Medved) teamed with Randy Dreyfuss back in 1978 to co-author THE FIFTY WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME. That book was apparently so warmly received that it spawned a virtual cottage industry of similar razzberry rosters from the Medved brothers, including THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS, SON OF GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS, and THE HOLLYWOOD HALL OF SHAME. So much movie popcorn has gone stale in the intervening years that another sequel is long overdue. I’m too undisciplined and lazy to confine myself to films released after 1978, so here is my own random list of cinema turkeys. Bear in mind, many of the films I’ve selected are so bad they’re good.

1. NASHVILLE REBEL (1966). The highlight is Tex Ritter singing I Dreamed I Was There in Hillbilly Heaven (Oh, What a Beautiful Sight.) Waylon Jennings and Henny Youngman in the same movie. Basically a rags-to-riches story of an Army vet who becomes a famous country singer. Typical Elvis plot.

2. IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) The odor of Ben-gay and the awful specter of Alzheimer’s disease pervade this mirthless and endless disgrace, where frenetic activity and worrisome pratfalls by the elderly are substituted for comedy, one of the best examples of what goes wrong when Hollywood casts a drove of has-beens, hoping the name recognition will overcome the lack of a script. Spencer Tracy, nearing the end of a distinguished acting career, is especially misused and abused in this gloomy, boring farce.

3. KITTEN WITH A WHIP (1964) Ann Margret and John Forsythe in a plot that’s anything but BACHELOR FATHER. Lest I be charged with lack of originality, I acknowledge that this film has been listed as one of “The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made” in THE OFFICIAL RAZZIE® MOVIE GUIDE compiled by Golden Raspberry originator John Wilson. The film is based on the 1959 Fawcett Gold Medal pulp novel by “Wade Miller,” a pseudonym coined by writing team Robert Alison Wade and H. William Miller. In this post-Monica Lewinski post-Larry Craig post-Eliot Spitzer post-Anthony Weiner age, a movie about a jailbait seductress out to blackmail a politician is tiresome territory indeed. Not merely yesterday’s news, it might qualify as child pornography were it not for the fact that Ann-Margret at the time was 23 playing 17.

4. WALKING TALL (1973) “When was the last time you stood and applauded a movie?” Not since DEEP THROAT, since you’re asking. I first viewed WALKING TALL at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign, IL when I was in law school. The Virginia was a former vaudeville palace that in its heyday had hosted Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Red Skelton, Will Rogers, W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers. The crowd on that particular evening was so bitterly divided in its sympathies that when a group of longhairs erupted in hilarious laughter at the point in the movie when the Dixie mafia blow Sheriff Buford Pusser’s wife Pauline Pusser (Elizabeth Hartman) away with a shotgun, some rednecks in the audience became so vociferously angry I thought an out-and-out brawl might break out.

It was kind of hard to empathize with Sheriff Pusser in his bereavement, perhaps because the special effects in the shotgun scene made it look like Elizabeth Hartman was being sprayed with ketchup. WALKING TALL is a particularly egregious example of the law-and-order exploitation flicks that proliferated during the early seventies. Study it as a period piece. I suspect we are about to see yet another wave of these, given current economic and social conditions.

5. TWILIGHT (2008) Same greenish tint as every made-for-the Sci-Fi Channel flick and the resemblance doesn’t end there.

6. HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN (1944) Every bit as much fun as being in the army. Best line is the one where Robert Hutton as Slim welcomes the Russians, “and our own colored boys.”

7. MULTIPLICITY (1996) High concept: MR. MOM meets BOYS FROM BRAZIL. Hollywood formula at work again. Cast a SNL veteran and who needs a script that’s funny?

8. THE RUG RATS MOVIE (1998) Slept through it. Heard it was bad.

9. LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE AND BLONDE (2003) Hard to believe the same actress who showed such promise in quirky films like ELECTION and FREEWAY would prostitute herself in this gobbler and its predecessor. But, hey, given the money, wouldn’t you?

10. ST. ELMO’S FIRE (1985) Fell asleep. Heard it was terrible, more boring than Demi before the implants.

Last night we watched THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1945). Or rather, I watched it. Maria watched part of it, her only criticism being that a movie is supposed to move, whereas she felt that this one was a tad slow in the motion department. She added that she wouldn’t mind watching the rest of it, particularly if she were strapped to a hospital bed with toothpicks propping up her eyelids and pain meds coursing through her veins. She did enjoy the scenes with the bulldog, whose name was Carlton, although George Brent’s flannel-mouthed pronunciation made me mistake it for Calvin, as in “Hey, yo yo Calvin!” She also appreciated the art direction, especially the spooky old Victorian mansion, but furniture only takes you so far.

I think in this instance my wife’s criticism is unduly severe. The pace of THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE was perfect for an atmospheric period piece set in pre-World War I America. Moreover, the pace is a vital factor in setting the mood of menace and dread that pervades virtually the entire movie, with the exception of the musical number.

That’s right, the musical number. Smack dab in the middle of the movie, on a dark, dark night with thunder crashing and lightning flashing and an insane killer running around loose, Gordon Oliver, who plays Steve, the younger stepbrother and likely suspect, sits down at the piano and croons a romantic lyric to Rhonda Fleming.

Perhaps the studio execs thought throwing in song or two would fool movie patrons into imagining they were going to see a musical, thereby putting more asses in seats. I know they tried the same thing in FRANKENSTEIN, where they chucked in a peasant dance number to break the tension, in the Curt Siodmak-scripted FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (remember the Wine, Wine, Wine, Drinking Wine song?) and in THE UNINVITED, where Ray Milland plays Stella by Starlight on the grand piano for Gail Russell, with no resulting loss of scare power in any one of those classic movies.

I suppose there’s precedent for it. Remember, Shakespeare had Ophelia sing a song in HAMLET, and Iago sings twice in OTHELLO. And Shakespeare in his tragedies is renowned for sending in the clowns whenever the scene called for comic relief. Regarding THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE Maria went so far as to suggest that an appearance by the Three Stooges would not have been unwelcome.

As soon as I saw that Robert Siodmak—Curt Siodmak’s brother and fellow émigré from Nazi Germany—had directed, I was hooked, and I wasn’t disappointed. This picture provides an excellent example of German Expressionism. Take, for example, the extreme and eerie closeup of the killer’s eye which precedes each murder, the victim’s face reflected in the pupil of that demented eye, which according to imdb belonged to the director himself.

I don’t know whether film purists would place Val Lewton within the direct genealogy line of German Expressionism, but THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE reminds me more than anything of Lewton’s peculiar and haunting style of filmmaking. Even Lewton favorite Kent Smith (CAT PEOPLE, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE) is cast, playing the young doctor and love interest of Dorothy McGuire, who stars as Helen, the mute young woman and presumptively the killer’s next victim.

Watch two prime examples of cob-up-the-ass acting style as George Brent and Kent Smith try to out-empty-suit each other. Brent’s effete, oily suaveoirfaire and pencil moustache reminded Maria of the late Harvey Korman. And you’ll savor the confrontation scene where Brent, Smith and Oliver engage in a three-way parlor war of words where nobody so much as raises his voice. I respectfully submit that such gentility is part of the charm of suspense movies from yesteryear.

As I progress in writing my latest novel AMERICAN BANSHEE I am dogged by the suspicion that I’m not realizing my goal of capturing the essence of fear and dread in the story. Flicks like THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE and anything by Val Lewton serve to remind me that terror lurks in the shadows, that man’s most powerful fear is of the unknown, and that pacing is everything. But there’s nothing wrong with putting a hat on Carlton or throwing in the Stooges to keep the kids interested, too.