An August Afternoon at the Cinema!

Summer is slowly sliding into autumn, and August has been gentler and easier than July was. While the sun is bright and warm, the breezes are cool while we sit at a sidewalk table outside our usual restaurant, enjoying an afternoon meal, and trading tales of things we've done since last assembling, and of our hopes for the autumn ahead.

After splitting the bill, we walk up the street to that beloved old movie theater we love so well. The green-haired gal at the counter and the ticket-taker with the biceps and tattoos are glad to see us...

This afternoon's movie is the 1936 adventure Death in the Air!



What makes this interesting is that, along with ah hair-raising plot, there's also antiwar undercurrents here, in its look at the problems of shellshocked veterans. (The old radio show The Shadow did an episode, "The Silent Avenger," that was also strongly antiwar, with an open message about how society expects people to kill in war but then to conveniently forget their training and experiences once the war is over.) While not great, it's an overlooked gem and very enjoyable.

The sun's still in the sky as we leave....let's get a drink and relax before going our separate ways...

WALK OUT ON DEATH by Charlotte Armstrong

I've been wanting to read some Charlotte Armstrong for a while, after reading some good things about her work. This was the first I picked up....and I wasn't too thrilled by it.

Walk Out on Death (originally titled Catch-As-Catch-Can) isn't much of a mystery, but a thriller in which a series of circumstances lead to a perilous situation. It opens with a fairly silly situation: world traveler Jonas Breen has brought home Laila, his beautiful daughter (or so he claims) from a quickie marriage in the South Seas (or so he claims). Seriously, everyone seems to take this at face value. But anyway, he dies, and innocent and very naive 18-year-old Laila inherits a half million dollars. (For 1952, that was a fortune.) She is surrounded by various cousins: Clive Breen, Dee Allison, and Andrew Talbot. Laila has a crush on Andy, who's been having a turbulent relationship with Dee, and Clive, who always needs money. There's also Pearl Dean, a friend of Jonas, a spiritualist who may or may not have designs on the Breen cash.

After realizing she's made a fool of herself over Andy, Laila leaves the house for a long walk, and while she's gone the people in the house are in a panic as the housekeeper collapsed and died. It turned out she had eaten some improperly-canned beans and got botulism as a result...and Laila had just eaten some of the same beans. Soon Dee and Andy are searching for her to get her to a hospital for treatment. (This was a reality in the day; people could and did die from botulism, and their only hope was to be rushed to a hospital for an injection of an antivenin before 24 hours were through.)

Clive finds out...and decides to keep Laila on ice until she dies from the poison, so he can inherit. But then she takes off on her own, hooking up with her friend Pearl and hiding in Pearl's trailer while she drives off to the beach.

Dee and Andy have a series of misadventures while looking for Laila, and there's a prolonged chase, a dramatic traffic accident, a creepy laundry truck driver, and a conclusion in a house about to be flooded with a powerful insecticide fog before it all ends happily.

It's a bit of a mess, but at least it's an energetic mess. It moves quickly although sometimes the plot contrivances are just too damn contrived and convenient, including Laila nursing a broken heart in the morning and finding true love in the afternoon. I did like how a witness to the aforementioned accident, an elderly mute woman, is regularly dismissed and ignored by everyone around her until finally someone stops and thinks to ask if she happened to see anything. Maybe a bit overly obvious that she's standing in for how so many women and their contributions are overlooked and ignored, and also for society's dismissive attitude toward the elderly, but it was still nicely done.

But all in all, the story is too muddled and too contrived to hit bullseye, but it is energetic and fast-moving enough to make an acceptable time-killer for a lazy afternoon. It's a fairly brief read, about 184 pages, and out of print, but you may come across an old copy in your local friendly used book emporium.

An August Evening at the Phantom Tavern...

It's an unexpectedly cool night in early August; normally we should feel like we're imprisoned in a celestial Crock Pot, but it's actually breezy and autumnal. No big concerts or anything, so tonight we wander out for a drink at a place we haven't been to before; it's an old, slightly ramshackle place, but the drinks are good, the prices reasonable, and they feature some good music.

Tonight, we're stepping outside the usual comfort zone and listening to some country/folk....here's a classic murder ballad....



Kind of chilling, eh? Surprisingly how many gruesome old ballads are out there like this. This is a 19th century ballad that got some play during the 20th century folk revival, and still pops up every now and then.

We have a good time and definitely will be back.....