Bookstore Saturday: Electric Boogaloo

A Bookstore Saturday happened. 

It almost didn't. We (the missus and I) were two bookstores in and had yet to find a store that suitably fit the requirements. As a reminder, Bookstore Saturday Requirements (BsSR) include the following:

1. Takes place on a Saturday (negotiable)
2. In a used bookstore (smattering of new allowed)
3. Involves 2 or more hours of in-store browsing (is it even possible to do less?)
4. Store must honor Used Bookstore Gods in look, feel and browsing experience

And in case you're wondering, requirement number 4 was the stumbling block. It usually is.

You know what Bookstore Gods hate? They hate when bookstore proprietors don't give horror its own section of shelves in their store. 

You want Bookstore Gods down on your neck, breathing all heavy and wet in your ear, just decide horror is not an actual genre and stick whatever horror titles you have in with "Mystery and Thriller." 

Or worse yet, just sprinkle those few horror titles you bother to stock in amongst your gigantic, sprawling "General Fiction" section that's already taking up half your shelf space.

Bookstore Gods are really pretty easy to get along with, as long as you don't cross them and as long as you don't make a mockery of sacred Genre Law. But if that's how you wanna roll, do it at your own risk. Just saying.

Okay. Harbinger Duty complete; let's get on to all the groovy books I found in this exceptionally groovy bookstore that does indeed honor all Bookstore Deities, major, middlin' and minor and had a horror section with shelves stacked three deep.

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Now I almost named this BsS post's title after this book, it being a sequel to Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and all, but "Bookstore Saturday: Evolution" just sounded dumb to me. So I picked a sequel suffix out of a hat and went with "Electric Boogaloo" instead. Because "electric boogaloo" is such an amazing word combination that it could never sound dumb. Ever.

Can't say I've actually seen the original Breakin' film let alone its sequel. But my sister has.

So I do have the original Crichton novel on my shelf, but it's been a long time since I've read it and I think I'll be giving it a revisit before I jump into this one.

I think this is the newest one of the haul, this time. 2019, it was published. Clearly the publisher decided to bank on Crichton's name over the fellow who actually wrote this book. Daniel H. Wilson is a readily recognizable name to me, but I suppose Crichton does have him beat as far as whole-world-recognition. For NOW.

Still I might be a tiny bit miffed to toil away at a novel and then have my name down at the bottom in wee font. Probably Mr. Wilson is a better man than I and has no issue.

At any rate, I've read three or four other books by Daniel Wilson and loved them, so I've got no fear in me about whether or not I'll enjoy this once I do get to it.

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Okay, so John Saul is a reasonable bet with most of his books, but then you show me (almost) any book with the word "creature" for its title and I'm on the hook.

That being said, I'll be pretty darn surprised if I don't get into this one and realize I'd already read it back in the day. At first I was thinking it's the novel they based the 80s Watchers film off of, but pretty quickly realized than was Koontz, not Saul.

Still. Looks awfully familiar, front and back. It's older; first published in 1989. But... it didn't ring enough of a bell for me not to slap it into my book basket anyway. So we'll see...

Uh, front cover is giving me... Football Ape-man vibes. Those aren't two words I'd expect to go together... That back cover blurb has me cheering in the stands, though.

For one thing, we got that "rebuild him" bit in there. That appeals to my cyborg-love-ness. Then they've got the "won't hurt him again... they won't dare." Boohwaaauughaaauuughaaauuugh!

Huh. I was going for a kind of maniacal laugh there, but it sounds more like someone is choking or something. Anyway. Next book.

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Oooooh... I love me a good Evil Kid book or movie. And what's better than just a standalone-all-on-his-own Evil Kid? (Why, Evil Twins, of course!)

And bonus points for kids who don't just settle for sociopath-evil but really go the distance to be supernatural-evil. 

Like these two apparently are.

Haven't heard of this author before, even after digging down through the pen names (Rosalind Erskine; Laura Black; Ivor Drummond; Frank Parrish; Domini Taylor; Megan Barker and Grania Beckford) to find one Roger Longrigg. I'm excited for this one, too.

I think this is probably the oldest of what I picked up this time - first published in 1984 although mine's a couple of years newer. Peter and Pandora. I mean, Peter's fine but you'd think the girl's name alone would be enough to warn you off...

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Okay. Next up.

If you know me at all you know it was the word "golem" that got me to pick this one up for a closer look. I love a good (or not so good) man made men story. Before tossing it into my basket, I really just checked to make sure it wasn't some police procedural with some serial killer that some newspapermen were calling "the golem" or whatever. 

That would be lame.

But, between those font and back cover blurbs it seems a safe bet it's got some sweet supernatural shenanigans going for it. This one's more recent, published in 2014.

Also, these guys are a father and son writing team. On the father's end, I wanna say I've maybe heard of his Alex Delaware character? But can't say I've read anything from either of these fellows before.

Oh, and if this one IS a good read, there's a sequel...

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Nature does make mistakes. And Big Bird says that is a-okay.

Not sure why I grabbed this one. I mean, I picked it up because it looked like some kind of creature feature and I'm a sucker for 'em. But I'm not as big on cryptids as I am on more standard fare - killer regular animals or killer giant regular animals or animals being messed with by science-hubris with terrible results. 

Still, this could be a good read. It's fairly recent - got a 2016 date on it.

Actually, cryptid-wise, I took this guy to be Mothman at first. Don't know too much about Mothman, but he's my pal River's favorite cryptid, so I know a little about him. 

Know next to nothing about the Jersey Devil.

Ohhh. Hunter Shea. Thought that name sounded familiar. I've totally read at least two others of his books. Pretty good.

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Well, I'm always on the lookout for a decent werewolf novel. I say "decent" because, like werewolf movies, there are fewer out there than other classic monsters enjoy, and what there is tends (also like their film counterparts) to run a little subpar. 

So decent is good enough; I'll take it. Here's hopin'.

This one was actually the third or fourth werewolf novel in the horror section, but damned if the others weren't all of the paranormal romance variety, of which I am not a fan. Not a fan of romance in general (book-wise - I do love a quality film romance or rom-com) let alone paranormal romance novels.

But this one looks to be pretty romance-free so I'm giving it a try.

Hadn't heard of Ray Garton, and looking him up it seems he died fairly recently. Also seems he had a long and prolific career as a horror writer. So this pick-up is looking better and better.

And speaking of werewolves getting short shrift, the author himself feels just about like I do on the subject.

This one is from 2008, and it also has a sequel, so if it hits the spot I can seek out the followup.

Well then.

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Sea Horror. Mmmmmmm. 

This one was another no brainer to put in the cart. It was published in 1999 - just squeaking by as a 90s horror novel. Can't really tell much about particulars from the cover and blurbs, but I'm happy to take my chances it'll be at least fair and hopefully more than.

James Powlik apparently is an oceanographer who also writes! Good combination, I say. Ooh, and he has a giant tsunami thriller as well. Guess I'll be giving that one a try, too.

But. Only a slight downer - while looking up the author's details, I inadvertently discovered this book is about deadly algae blooms. Which doesn't sound very exciting. But I'm still down to give it a go. I still am.

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More Sea Horror! Mmmmmmm.

Look, I'm not gonna just assume that algae bloom up there isn't a good read, but this next sea horror (from 2003 in case you wuz wundrun) has an eyeball, which probably means it has teeth and wants to eat us. 

So that's good. Kind of looks like an otter eye. I didn't just buy a book about killer hairless otters, did I? Probably not. Anyway, we shall see once I get to this one.

Ooh. This author looks like he might have some other stuff to check out as well. Bunch of sea thrillers. Bunch of regular thrillers. Bunch of mysteries. Sweet.

Oh. Author research also gave me the sea horror's identity here - sounds like it's an unknown species of dolphin. Which sounds more exciting than algae. Or otters.

It shall be interesting...

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And, we finish up with the good old tried and true man of steel. Hard to go wrong, here. And this is the only nonfiction book I picked up this time around. I've actually got... probably several... Superman histories of one kind or another, but I'm always down for one more.

This is from 2012, and author Larry Tye looks to also be a journalist, and has a pretty eclectic bibliography. I think this one'll be a fun read too. Maybe give me some info not already rattling around my head on the subject.

Wow. Looks like the book has endorsements from no less than Noel Neill, Jack Larson and Richard Donner. ( ! ) 

That's sayin' somethin'.

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And that about wraps it up. Bookstore Saturday Success (BsSS)! 

If you like books, or bookstores, or are just super bored, you can read some other Bookstore Saturday shenanigans here. 

You are lucky.

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The Lost Zeppelin (1929)

Huh. So I came across this wee film while I was wandering about the Netflix site, doing one of those periodic DVD queue replenishment things I do.

Y'see, once or twice a year I go through Netflix's movies genre by genre, slap 40 or 50 I think I might like to see (or see again) into my queue, then forget the whole thing exists until whenever the next "almost empty" reminder shows up. I figure since everything I added holds at least some interest to me, I can just not bother with upkeep and be pleasantly surprised by whatever shows up.

This clever plan works most of the time--every once in awhile I end up with a DVD in-hand that I'd unwittingly streamed on Amazon the week before, or a disc shows up I can't for the life of me figure out why adding it seemed like a good idea, but mostly my little system works and keeps me happily in weekend-movie-watching-mode.

Anyway, enough about my Netflix adding-to-the-queue game plan. YOU came here to read about The Lost Zeppelin. And so you shall:

I think what got The Lost Zeppelin added to my queue in the first place was (a) it's a 1920s talkie and I was curious what that would look/sound like, and (b) what's not to love about a cinematic dirigible disaster? (Don't you just love saying that word? Dirigible. DIRIGIBLE!)

Of course I qualify my what's-not-to-love-ness as being for the cinematic variety versus real life, since the Hindenburg tragedy truly horrifies me even today, but I do so love a good fictional disaster of almost any kind, dirigible-style included. (DIRIGIBLE!) Anyway, upon disc's arrival, this movie pretty much provided me with what I was hoping for.

The film itself runs about an hour and eleven minutes, but it feels longer on account of all the, well, talking going on during the picture. Maybe sound was so new at the time audiences were eating all that dialogue up, but for a 21st century movie-goer this thing moves pret-ty slow. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it. I did. It was just a slow-mover, like more than a few movies of its time. And in that same vein, the acting comes off a little stilted, the direction a bit static--you know how it is. But with all that in mind, there's still a fair bit of room for enjoyment.

The film concentrated on three main characters, played by Conway Tearle, Virginia Valli and Ricardo Cortez. I don't know enough about 1920s Hollywood to say if these actors were "stars" of not, but each was quite active from the early teens through at least the mid thirties--and in Cortez's case, right up into the sixties. So, no one hit wonders carrying the film.

I didn't see anywhere that this was taken from a short story, but it has the feel of one of those air adventure pulps so popular at the time--you know, like Air Wonder Stories or Flying Aces. Air travel in general--and dirigibles in particular--were all the rage in the late twenties/early thirties, and this movie plays like one of those air pulp mags would read.

So yeah, the early talkie aspects of the film were both frustrating and enjoyable--frustrating because they were primitive enough to get in the way of the film's storytelling, and enjoyable just by way of nostalgia and a sense of "wow, once upon a time that stuff was really new and how cool to see this slice of history today" kind of thing.

The special effects for the film must have been stunning for their day though, and I'll say they actually hold up reasonably well in the here and now. At least nothing took me out-of-story by coming off as ridiculous or overly clunky, effects-wise. A lot of miniatures being effectively used throughout, along with full-sized props, and what with the thing being filmed almost entirely on sound stages, they did a really nice job portraying Antarctic terrain and conditions.

Hmm. I was about to comment on the movie's peripheral sci-fi elements, as a 1920s dirigible certainly wouldn't have been able to make it to anywhere near the South Pole, but a quick Google search tells me my knowledge deficits aren't limited only to 1920s Hollywood star status. Looks like dirigibles (DIRIGIBLE!) of the time can and did make it to the North Pole at least, so that makes this movie more of a straight up adventure, and not really even marginally sci-fi.

Annnd... I guess that's all I have to say about this little picture. Not one you need to seek out unless it's for curiosity's sake (like it was for me), but if you do, chances are you'll come away feeling like it was at least mildly worth your time. Oh, and don't bother with a Netflix DVD, this thing is public domain and all over the internet....

So there. (DIRIGIBLE!)

TWO AND A HALF ICE-COATED-AIRBAG BRAINS

Airport '77 (1977) & Airport '77 (1977) by M. Scheff & D. Spector

(&)

Granted, it's been a year since I last saw the movie. A year ago was when I had a mind to watch all four Airport films (which I did) and do a blog post on the lot of 'em (which I didn't). But I recently came across Airport '77s novelization in a thrift store. Well, I bought it and gave it a read, so now I'm revisiting the theme, but with far lesser visions of grandeur.

So, you probably know the gist of all the Airport films, including 1977s watery take, but here's a quick rundown just in case. Over a 10 year span (which span just happened to encompass The Golden Age of Hollywood Disaster Films, and yes, I just made that term up--happens a lot around here) we had the following Airport movies:

• Airport (1970), where we (yawn-inducingly) watch an airport manager trying to keep his airport open during a snowstorm, while a suicidal bomber tries to blow up a 707 inflight.
• Airport 1975 (1974) Hah! You thought that release date was gonna be '75, didn't you? So did I. Anyway, here we have a guy who, while flying his wee plane, has a heart attack and crashes it into an also-flying 747.
• Airport '77 (1977), where art thieves hijack a 747 and (accidentally) crash it under the ocean's surface (yikes!).
• And finally, The Concorde ... Airport '79 (1979), where a corrupt arms dealer (repeatedly!) tries to down an SST that's carrying someone who's threatening to out him as a bad guy.

Yep. And, as with most film franchises, this one started out (at least somewhat) realistic in nature and with each sequel went farther and farther afield, ending with an infamous "Final Film of the Franchise" so ridiculous and making so little money, nobody ever made another one. A sad and oft-repeated Hollywood story.

For me, Airport '77 was the best of the lot. That first movie was really a drama with a bit of disaster thrown in, and all the films except '77 kept to mid-air thrills, which is fine as far as it goes. But combining mid-air thrills with trapped-beneath-the-ocean thrills? That's callin' my name long and loud. Now, '77 was towards the end of the film series, so of course there was plenty of disbelief to be suspended, but like I say, air disaster and underwater disaster?! In the very same film? I'm in. And while the premise was stretched paper thin--an airplane crash-landing in the ocean, sinking to the bottom and remaining intact with no one but the bad guys dead (at first)--it's a hell of a fun ride to this picture's end credits.

We had an all star "Disaster Movie Cast," too. (By law this requires mostly big names that are anywhere from a tiny bit to way past their Hollywood earning prime, with a few lesser known up and comers thrown in to boot.) Here was our cast for this one:

• Jack Lemmon as Capt. Don Gallagher
• Lee Grant as Karen Wallace
• Brenda Vaccaro as Eve Clayton
• Joseph Cotten as Nicholas St. Downs III
• Olivia de Havilland as Emily Livingston
• James Stewart as Philip Stevens
• George Kennedy as Joseph "Joe" Patroni
• Darren McGavin as Stan Buchek
• Christopher Lee as Martin Wallace
• Robert Foxworth as Chambers
• Robert Hooks as Eddie
• Monte Markham as Banker
• Kathleen Quinlan as Julie
• Gil Gerard as Frank Powers
• James Booth as Ralph Crawford
• Monica Lewis as Anne
• Maidie Norman as Dorothy
• Pamela Bellwood as Lisa Stevens
• Arlene Golonka as Mrs. Jane Stern
• Tom Sullivan as Steve
• M. Emmet Walsh as Dr. Williams
• Michael Pataki as Wilson
• George Furth as Gerald Lucas
• Richard Venture as Commander Guay
• Elizabeth Cheshire as Bonnie Stern
• Anthony Battaglia as Benjy

Wow. That list was longer than I expected it to be. And now I'm psychically unable to move on without pointing out who my favorites are and why. Sit tight, won't take long:

We've been hijacked!
By vampires!

We've got Lee Grant, for being a Columbo Killer and Mrs. Colbert in In the Heat of the Night; James Stewart, for Harvey, Rear Window, etc. (Besides, he's James Stewart, amiright?); Darren McGavin, 'cause--hello!--Carl Kolchak! (And A Christmas Story, and....); Christoper Lee, so many reasons why.... except possibly not for that Howling sequel--but he even managed to class that one up a bit; Robert Foxworth, an (I think) underrated actor I've greatly enjoyed in several movies and TV shows, including The Questor Tapes (he was a Columbo Killer, too!); Monte "The Seven Million Dollar Man" Markham; Gill "Buck Rogers" Gerard; and, last but not least, Michael "Captain Barbera" Pataki.

Okay. Back to airplanes. So you probably already know the in-depth (no pun intended) drill on this movie's plot, and if you don't, Wikipedia gives you a nice rundown, so I don't think I'll go into that. I mean, there's plenty out there on this movie already, for those who want screenshots and plot details. I'll just wander along the fringes, as I'm wont to do.

I think, when it comes down to it, what does it for me in this film--what takes it above the other three movies and makes it my favorite--is the unspeakable tension of people being trapped in an air filled box that's slowly filling up with water. Oy vey, what a way to go! After all, The Poseidon Adventure is one of my very favorite disaster films of all time, and this is basically The Poseidon Adventure with wings. Well, "Poseidon Light," might be more apt to say.

Has anyone seen my
friend? About 6 feet
tall, with floppy ears?

You know, until I re-watched the film, I'd been under the (mistaken) impression the plane crashed just barely underwater, with it's tail fin sticking out, and that's how they were finally spotted and rescued. Not so. They were, like, hundreds of feet underwater, and pretty much invisible from the surface. But getting a look at the novelization, whose cover mirrors the movie's poster, I realized I was remembering that image versus actual film content.

By the way, give that movie poster up top a click-through to see that tail fin large-and-in-charge. It's a beautiful illustration, and researching it's artist led me to yet another amazing talent. Guy's name was Jack Leynnwood and he was mostly known for doing plastic model kit packaging art. Check out that link on his name, and this one too, for background and groovy artwork.

Leynnwood did a lot of extremely cool stuff, including some amazingly detailed aviation illustrations, but my two favorites (from those I came across today) are most definitely not aviation themed:

Right?

So, the novelization for Airport '77 was actually done by the film's two screenwriters, which I figure is often-but-not-always a good thing, since a screenwriter's going to know their story and characters well right off the bat and can more easily flesh things out for a novel. Assuming said screenwriter is talented to begin with, and these two fellows seem to have been talented enough.

David Spector has a whopping two writing credits on IMDB: the screenplay for this film, and another disaster (tele)film called Skyway to Death from 1974. Michael Scheff was a bit more prolific, Hollywood-wise anyway, with 23 credits of mostly TV stuff, including Murder She Wrote, Hart to Hart and (ouch) Mrs. Columbo. (He also worked on Skyway to Death.)

And who's to say what else these guys have done? IMDB doesn't keep track of anything but Hollywood, so one or both might have gone on to do a lot of non-Hollywood writing or whatnot. My quick and dirty search didn't yield even enough information to know if they're both still living, let alone what else they've accomplished professionally in their lifetimes. I'll just assume they've both made good in life and either died happy or are still enjoyably plugging along until I hear different.

As for the novelization itself, it's a trim little book, clocking in at just over 200 pages (hijack begins on 75 and they hit the oil rig on 104, to give you an idea of the pacing). Not a lot of padding or extra scenes (in fact I don't recall any scenes not in the movie), but it does have plenty of silent dialog (is that a real term? probably not), what with the various characters thinking things to themselves, that you obviously wouldn't have in the film. (Man, that would be annoying, hearing an entire ensemble cast's silent-thought-voice-overs all throughout a movie like this.) But for the book it works nicely, giving us backstory and more depth for pretty much everyone involved.

Oh, you know what? There is a short scene in the book where a guy named Callahan delivers the knockout gas to the two art thieves. We get a little back story on him as he drives to the rendezvous point and hands over the canister. So that's a book thing not in the movie. That's the only one I remember, but there might have been one or two more little things. Still, nothing major to be found here versus the film.

Let's see, what else did I notice as I went through the book? Mostly little differences, like:

• Joseph Banker, who is the lead bad guy in the book (seemed like Wilson was in charge in the movie), doesn't do the fake mustache and cheek inserts thing when he puts on that maintenance man disguise in the airport's locker room.
• Eve Clayton has close cropped hair, actress Brenda Vaccaro did not. 
• Copilot Chambers is a lot more nervous and subservient, and it's actually pointed out with backstory he's being coerced/blackmailed due to gambling debts, which I'm pretty sure wasn't a thing in the film.
• There's a lot more Air Traffic/Coast Guard/Navy descriptive rah-rah stuff in the book... which is to be expected. You gotta offset the whole plane going down thing with how amazing and efficient the rescue efforts would be in a story like this.
• We get to witness Banker's death in the cargo hold--crushed and drowned--in more excruciating detail, and it's better explained that the  cargo hold breach is what sinks the plane so quickly. Probably technically in the film too, but things are moving so fast onscreen it's hard to pick up all the details.

Oh, and you know what else is different between the book and movie? And I didn't notice this until after I was completely finished with the novel, but Joe Patroni is nowhere to be found in this book, not even a name drop. Hmm. Makes me wonder if the screenwriters were against the idea altogether and it was a studio thing, getting George Kennedy back for the film. Could be they took the opportunity with the novelization to write him back out. (Purely supposition on my part, of course.)

For those not in the know, George Kennedy was the only actor who appeared in all four films, recurring his role as Joe Patroni. The character differs wildly from film to film, going from being a chief mechanic in Airport, to a vice president of operations in Airport 1975, to a consultant in Airport '77, and finally an airline pilot in The Concorde ... Airport '79. Not only does Patroni's job title change, the character's personality is all over the map from movie to movie. Just as well to have him out of this story, I think--wasn't missed by me, obviously, since I didn't notice his omission 'til after I'd finished the book. And it seems to me the character had the least to do in this movie, anyway. So yeah.

And that's it for this go around. I don't know what is it about seeing a 747 go down that's so alluring to me. Obviously, it's a horrifying scenario in real life, but fictionalized versions of this kind of thing are so fascinating to me. Hmm. Makes me wonder why I don't have more disaster films here at DMB. Might have to rectify that....

Oh, and in the way of brain counts, I'd have to say both the film and its novelization are pretty much even-steven as far as enjoyment factor goes. Neither offers more or less Disaster Glee than the other, but getting the same story through such differing mediums is interesting enough in itself that you'd do well to give both a shot. In my humble opinion. So I'm giving both the book and the film:

THREE AND A HALF HIGH-ALTITUDE-TO-CRUSHING-DEPTHS BRAINS