Steven Sheil

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They is great but McCoy’s other Hollywood-related book I Should Have Stayed Home is worth seeking out too. (Always thought that those ‘Hard-Boiled’ and ‘Perverse’ tags would be great on a t-shirt)

Haven’t seen the film for years - someone bought it for me a while back but it’s one of those things where you really have to be in the mood for some bleakness.

It’s about a couple of struggling young actors during the Great Depression who take part in a Dance Marathon alongside a bunch of other desperate people.

I remember as a kid first hearing the title 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' and thinking that it was sounded like some kind of comedy. Then later I read the book and realised that it's just about the bleakest thing imaginable.

A vintage paperback edition of 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' by Horace McCoy. The cover illustration features a couple of a dancefloor, lit by a single spotlight. He's straining backwards trying to hold her up, her legs almost dragging on the floor. They're both exhausted.

I already have this book, but I'm really tempted by this edition just because of the cover.

Marlene Dietrich in a red and black saloon gal dress, sitting on the back of a smiling mustachioed man as she rides him like a horse.

You do also get to see Marlene Dietrich ride a man like a horse though

A wide shot of a Western landscape with Marlene Dietrich standing between two obviously fake stone towers looking out at an obviously fake matte painting of a mesa in the distance.

Rancho Notorious has a dark belly, with lots of suspicion and deceit, but also moments of real daftness - the frequent interspersing of a terrible theme song detailing the story + some over the top acting from Kennedy - and the artificiality that comes from shooting landscapes on studio backlots.

Arthur Kennedy, driven by 'hate, murder & revenge' after the killing of his sweetheart, tracks the unidentified killer to the outlaw safe house Chuck-A-Luck, run by former showgirl Marlene Dietrich, where he infiltrates the outlaws to try and find his prey, as paranoia and obssession stalk him.

The Title card for the 1952 Fritz Lang Western 'Rancho Notorious'

Tonight's viewing:

If you're a Woman in Horror, be it artist, illustrator, author, writer, reviewer, director, WHATEVER-

Say hi and link to your work here!

Let's make a thread of Horror from Women that people can peruse & discover some cool, new stuff

I'll start, in the comments/replies :)
♀️🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 📚🎨 ✍️ 📽️🩸 #wihm

Starmer reading this: "I've got a plan, no? More briefcase wankers!"

Poster for the 1956 film Slightly Scarlet, directed by Allan Dwan. The poster features Rhonda Fleming, John Payne and Arlene Dahl and the tagline “Out of the shadows of a vice-ridden city”

Tonight’s viewing:

Long time since I've seen it but I remember it as being an enjoyably mad watch.

The vinyl soundtrack to The Stunt Man, featuring an illustration on the cover of Peter O'Toole as a naked demon on a camera riser.

I picked up the soundtrack to this from a charity shop quite recently - I should schedule in a rewatch

Highsmith: A romance of the 1950s by Marijane Meaker.

What if two mystery writers, one who wrote pulp paperbacks and one who wrote literary fiction, fell in love for two years but ended up hating each other so much they killed each other off as characters? Patricia Highsmith + Marijane Meaker (aka Vin Packer) = my favorite toxic lesbians of all time 🖤

It's pretty good, especially the subplot around Mitchum and his ex-lover who also lives in the town

Yeah, I enjoyed it too, especially the whole sequence around the confrontation in the saloon

Mitchum plays Clint Tolliver a 'town-tamer' (like a one man Seven Samurai) employed by the residents of a beaten-down town to rid them of the rich man whose hired gunslingers are terrorising them. But Tolliver has some demons (both old and new) which threaten to make his cure worse than the disease

a title card for a black and white film. It reads 'Robert Mitchum as the..."

Another title card. It reads 'Man With The Gun'

Tonight's viewing:

The Big Grab / The Savage Breast The Big Grab / The Savage Breast eBook : Trinian, John, Greene, Brian, Litchfield, Nicholas: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Looks to be a Kindle edition if that's any good for you?
www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Grab-Sav...

Happy to post it!

A 1960s paperback - The Big Grab by John Trinian. The cover feature a photo of a man's face very close-up like he's staring into your soul.

I have a cheap paperback edition (with an intense close-up cover) which I'm happy to lend

Love this film! And has a great ending.

* "Good evening one and all," said Revelstoke, giving his salutation the special, somehow haughty inflection that was his trademark. "I am speaking to you from the set of The Godless in Chirapulco, Mexico, where the makers of dreams are putting together another meretricious illusion to tarnish all our souls." I looked at Ira, and Ira looked at me. Ira's look was that of a kid who has just discovered that there is no Santa Claus, or maybe that his mother and father had had to do that in order to have him. "There has been a murder on this set," Revelstoke continued. "I am not surprised. Carelessness in moral behavior and utter contempt for what is true and beautiful can very well lead, in a series of insidious, unnoticed steps, to the ultimate transgression —the taking of life." I whispered to Ira, "Does anybody really dig that?" "How the fuck do I know?" Ira was almost crying. "But that," continued Revelstoke, "is not what is

really significant, and, if I may say so, deliciously ironic about this murder. Regard, please. An attractive and innocent young woman —from a prominent family known for their good works and charities —has been cut off in the prime of life because, herself a victim of illusion, she dared to enter the sinkhole of atrocious taste that is known, generically, as Hollywood." He rolled the "L's" in Hollywood as though he were performing oral sex upon the word.

Revelstoke does a report from set and is a real asshole about it, leaving George and the crew to fear that the bad publicity will frighten off their millionaire backer J. Sutton Fargo. That is, unless they can find the murderer…(End of Chapter 2)

Revelstoke had high, thin nostrils and wore, with a tight tie, one of those short tab collars I thought had gone out with Franchot Tone or Robert Montgomery. Ira, after we'd been introduced, summoned up his best distressed look and said to me, "Mr. Revelstoke wants to VTR his bit while Lance is actually shooting a scene in the background. Tell him, George. Tell him Lance will never go for it." Revelstoke turned his eyes upon me and, from their royal blue depths, sent out a couple of laser beams. "So you're George Kennedy," he said. "One always recognizes you people, of course. It's one of the things wrong with Hollywood movies. One never enjoys the characters; one keeps seeing the same old stars. Who, frankly, for the most part, bore one." "I heard you didn't like movies," I said, evenly enough. "On the contrary," drawled Revelstoke. "I adore them. Good ones. Like The Eternal Turnip, which just won first prize at the Budapest festival. The symbolism was superb."

Also with the critics is the fictional Peter Revelstoke, who seems to be the embodiment of stuck-up film critics (though if anyone has a download link for The Eternal Turnip, hit me up)

With no camera call again, I was there to help greet the media luminaries when they arrived in a couple of sedans and a cloud of dust. Phyllis Upton had emerged from her trailer office to ramrod the affair, and she introduced everybody around as the reporters-celebrities in their own right-stepped from the cars. Mike Wallace, whom I'd met before, said, "How you doin', George?" "Pretty good," I said. "How's it going back in the center of the world?" "Same old garbage and terror in the streets. It's still the place to be, though."

Now the media are arriving , drawn by news of the murder, including the likes of Mike Wallace

The next day they got to my scene, which was with Genevieve Bujold. She was supposed to be the daughter of the French fire-engine inventor who had come to town, and she was giving me a bottle of imported wine, which I would spit out, wishing it were plain old red-eye. It was a cute scene, and I thought I played it funny, but Lance wasn't satisfied. "George," he said, putting his hand on my shoulder and fixing me with that phony earnest look, "it's really Genevieve's scene, and I want it funny, but not so damned funny." "Then favor Genevieve in the shot or put my dialogue O.S.," I said. "George," he said, "let me do the directing." I couldn't stop myself from saying, "I thought Joel was the director." "He is, he is," Lance said quickly. "I'm just helping out a little here. Anyway, you know what I mean. out a little here. Anyway, you know what I mean. "Not yet," I said. "But I'll keep working on it."

Genevieve Bujold is also in the film - it’s quite a stacked cast. Also, George is a bit more prickly on set than I anticipated

That evening, after Cruz and his team of detectives, which included a photographer, had done their stuff in the arroyo, and after the body had been removed to the hospital for an autopsy, Mike and I sat once more in the

cantina, where Jennifer Schwartz and Mariette Hartley joined us. I liked having Mariette at the table. I could listen to that exquisite diction of hers all day. In The Godless she was perfect as the older sister who had returned from the East and hated the wild, wild West. Her performance, I was sure, would do even more for her career than those camera commercials she'd done with Jim Garner a few years before. An Oscar nomination maybe. If anybody ever got to see The Godless.

A shot of a young Mariette Hartley with short brown hair in Ride The High Country

We also learn that another member of the cast is Mariette Hartley, who I was watching only the other night in Ride The High Country

It wasn't a real bull; it was a set of horns on a wheelbarrow-like contraption, and a teen-age lad—one of his sons, no doubt— was charging him with this while he practiced pasos naturales, rebolleras, and all the rest. There is a certain type of large, heavy man who has a peculiar grace and is light on his feet. Sidney Green-street, Laird Cregar, and Victor Buono, to all requiescat in pace, come to mind. Alfonso Cruz was like that. To my unpracticed eye what he was doing with that cape looked pretty good.

Ch. 2 of Murder On Location. George and his buddy NYPD cop-turned-actor Mike Corby go to visit the Mexican chief of police, who is doing some bullfighting practice, giving George the chance to namedrop some more character actors.

I have a feeling that the whole list was dictated to the graphic designer down a bad phone line while the client was operating an electric drill.