STEVE CARROLL WRITES

I have   long been a fan of all things espionage-related, but especially the various   book series that flourished in the wake of the popularity of the Bond   movies in   the 60s. I’m not talking A-listers like Matt Helm , Quiller , Modesty Blaise , or   Sam Durrel l here. I’m talking about the books that sincerely   aspired to be   also-rans, decent copies of the original that could be churned out quickly   while the iron was hot to satisfy a marketplace hungry for spy-fi   hijinks. They   had their cinematic equivalents in the realm of cinema as well, with countless   Euro-spy movies made on minuscule budgets with mostly   unknown actors doing   their best 007 impersonations. As with all fads, they ran their course and   mostly fell out of favor, although the best of them were   able to hang around   for a while into the 70s and 80s. I say all of this to highlight how unique it was to have   someone w...

This review requires a bit of context and backstory. Apologies for my long- windedness as this unexpectedly turned into an essay on my love affair with   Ian   Fleming’s gift to espionage fiction literature. If you prefer, scroll down f or the review proper without enjoying my trip down memory   lane. It's marked where to start reading... I was raised on James Bond and I don’t mean that in a loose, metaphorical   sense. My father was a bona fide 007 aficionado who went out of his way to   proselytize   me into the ranks while still a very young boy. I’m told I was taken to the theater   to see Thunderball on its first theatrical run at the age of 3; I   have zero   memory of this, of course. I have a slight memory of seeing You Only Live Twice   as a 5-year old. However, seeing a double-feature rerelease   of those two films   as a 6-year old is vividly in my memory, as is a double-feature of Dr. No and   From Russia Wit...

When I was in 8 th  grade I picked up and read a book with cover art   depicting a werewolf coming toward the viewer through tall grass at night. It   is   illuminated by a single handheld torch. As a lifelong lover of all things   monster-related, my 13-year old self couldn’t resist and I bought and read the   book   within the span of a single week. That book was Moon of the Wolf , by   Leslie H. Whitten and I immediately set about trying to locate and read   anything I   could by the author. The holy grail book at the time was Progeny of   the Adder , which I eventually found decades later at a used book store. So, what was so special about Progeny of the Adder ? I learned that many   consider it to have had a very distinct influence on Jeff Rice’s The Night   Stalker , and on the surface alone, I can see merit in those claims. First published   in 1965, a full 5 years before Rice wrote it and 7 years before it wou...

My father, God rest his soul, had a long and storied history of allowing me to watch age-inappropriate movies, and I loved him for it. Such was the case when in January of 1972, Dad excitedly told me we were going to watch a TV movie about a vampire. That movie was  The Night Stalker  and I was 6 months shy of my 10th birthday. Just a few months later he took me to see  The Godfather  and the next year,  Enter the Dragon  and  The Exorcist . Dad was cool like that. I vividly remember the movie, which was a smash hit, garnering the highest ratings of any TV movie at the time. It starred the charismatic Darren McGavin as investigative newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak and was produced by veteran TV producer Dan Curtis, best known for being the driving creative force behind the hit horror soap opera,  Dark Shadows .  Its teleplay was written by none other than veteran...

I have been on a bit of a folk horror kick recently . I have found it   to be a rich and fertile subgenre worthy of a deep dive. For anyone curious as   to what   this genre entails, I found the Wikipedia description to be   surprisingly on point (slightly edited by me): Folk horror  is a subgenre of horror ... that   uses elements of folklore to invoke fear in its audience. Typical elements   include a rural setting and   themes of isolation, religion, the power of nature,   and the potential darkness of rural landscapes. Many derive their horror from   the actions and   beliefs of people rather than explicitly supernatural elements;   the primary focus of the stories is often upon naïve outsiders coming up   against   these forces. I found out about  Revelator   through some online research into modern folk horror where it was near the top   of many lists. I was unfamiliar with Daryl Gregory, but ...