Nancy Drew, Reporter

Recently I discovered an outmoded but glowingly adorable film on Turner Classic Movies...one that did my heart a lot of good. Over a bowl of cereal, I watched "Nancy Drew, Reporter" (1939), the first in a series of films chronicling the adventures of Carolyn Keene's young, daring female sleuth. This venturesome film has a trifling running time of just over an hour, but packs enough moxie and 1930s good-nature to come off as a charming, forgotten relic. The prudish - nay, puritanical - principals that Drew and her chums are governed by, as well as the stark contrast between black and white - right and wrong - are unbelievable to the point of being comical. But through that naive, wide-eyed optimism lives a moment in time when true value was still being placed in good manners and honest morals. At least, it certainly seemed that way.

The plot isn't much to speak of. Nancy Drew (Bonita Granville) learns that a woman on trial for murder has been falsely accused, and the evidence which would absolve her is in the possession of a sketchy-looking couple. She spends most of the time searching for clues and trying to outwit the criminal element, all the while placating the local (and mostly useless) police department. But in the end we know good and well that the criminals will be hauled away to jail, and Nancy and her pals will have a hearty laugh at their own expense, ending the film on a warm, affable note.

The charm of 1930s-era Hollywood films (particularly the whodunit murder mysteries) have an undeniable magnetism that never fails to betwitch. The strictly enforced Hayes Code denied filmmakers any opportunity to be even marginally provocative in their stories. Moreover, the bad guys were never allowed to win, righteousness prevailing each and every time...no matter whether the circumstances were believable or not. Because of this, many of these types of films can seem quite wooden in their execution, quite flat in how they are directed, written and acted. Admittedly, there weren't many cinematic marvels to come out of Hollywood then.

Regardless, I love these movies. "Nancy Drew, Reporter" did me a lot of good. It reminded me of my helplessly old, home-spun soul...luring me backwards into a place and time when basic moral values were highly esteemed. No, people didn't really talk and act that way, but it's kinda heartwarming to imagine that it was how folks knew they ought to be. Plus I'm simply infatuated with the breezy jazz and and the 1930s colloquialisms. Watching with the right kind of eyes and ears can leave one nearly tipsy with outright nostalgia.

The Price of being Vincent

And so it goes, I'm a fan of Vincent Price's career (my first thought was to write "I'm a STUDENT of his career," but the man's been dead for far too long ... and though I've lauded his film output, one can't put a film like "Witchfinder General" -- no matter how good it REALLY is -- on the shelf next to anything WORTH studying, like the works of Coctau or Jean Renoir) but always felt the man capable of more than the gothic hash the world mostly knows him for. That said, Price never seemed to elevate himself beyond the material he worked with, which is why his performances always seem genuinely eery.

Then someone sent me this the other day ...


... and I couldn't believe it. First things first, Price NEVER played Dracula ... so why the Lugosi Dracula costume and cape??

But what really just GALLED me was ... Price was a man who once played leading man to the likes of Gene Tierney and was a 20th Century Fox favorite ... reduced, nay, CASTRATED into doing a TILEX commercial???

I was also sent this:


Perhaps what adds insult to festering injury are these corporate set-ups ... using the likeness and voice of Vincent Price, placing him in a generic "haunted castle with thunder and lightning" setting ... reducing the length of his career into a paltry mass of pop culture goo. There was a man who was a master chef, art collector and historian ... a master thespian (the word "actor" just doesn't work in his case) ... at the twilight of his career becoming a mouthpiece for the likes of shower cleaners and blank VHS tape companies.

To his credit, Price didn't appear to condescend or trifle with the material. As schmaltzy and gutless as it all is, he took it all in stride and somehow managed to very slightly elevate the material, giving it credence it most certainly didn't deserve.

...but first, an introduction.

Now that you are here, most likely by some cosmic shift in the global blogosphere, I bid you welcome. My presence in this dusty corner of the big ole "w-w-w" is an attempt to produce a viable blog, navigating the chasm between the rational and demented. I've jockeyed around the net, rifled through enough blogs (or WEblogs ... whatev) to realize just how mundane the word and idea have become. The concept of a man or woman dispatching opinion and commentary on the net - swimming in a sea of opinion/commentary (fair and balanced ... most likely otherwise) - bores me, frankly. Dissections of political climate, social agenda, and the cannibalism of religious freedoms should probably be left in the hands of a capable analyst. Otherwise our collective opinion is absorbed and scattered throughout the web ... for anyone to read, but few to find.

So I humbly offer up this blog to the great digital yonder. Am I to be just another long-winded blogger with little to offer besides conjecture and uninformed opinion? Yeah, probably. But my design is something different ... nothing extraordinary, but my aim is lofty.


Not even sure where I'm going with this ... except to say that I'd like to author a blog in which style and substance entwine ... offering intellectual and pop culture penetration, refracted through a deep-focused lens of art, philosophy, and Christian faith. My ideas for this here blog aren't at all tangible yet, but I've never been a "big picture" kind of guy. I'm often swept up in the tiny details of any job I work on. This blog will probably be no exception. But it should be interesting to see how it works out.
"14 Seconds To Hell" is a title I didn't originate, but one I think most clearly 
exemplifies the tone of this blog (or once again, my intention). It was the title of a pulpy (and somewhat trashy) American spy novel first printed in 1968, as part of the "Nick Carter, Killmaster" line of espionage paperbacks to come out of the 1960s and 70s. Printed on cheap paper stock and sold off paperback racks in American drug stores from sea to shining sea, the Nick Carter line was directly inspired by the international success of Ian Fleming's superspy, James Bond. Featured in bold print on the spines of nearly all the early Carter novels was the inscription: "Another Killmaster Chiller ... Out-Bonds James Bond!" This simple bit of marketing proved effective, generating the sales of several million copies of each paperback. Indeed, each Nick Carter adventure is a thrilling and mildly compelling read, despite the dated Cold War storylines and politically incorrect treatment of women and ethnicities in general. These novels were the last bastion of the "men's adventure" magazines and novels that, at their beginning, perfectly reflected America's exhausted mistrust and loss of innocence in the wake of World War II. These novels were lean and mean, not wasting a word in favor of telling a story at the speed of a freshly dispersed bullet. Violence and sex, though tame by modern literary standards, seeped through the pages like condensation from a glass of ice water. Unlike Bond, Carter didn't rely on gadgets and pie-in-the-sky technology to help accomplish his mission. His gun, nicknamed Wilhelmina, a stripped down German luger, and his knife, Hugo, a pearl-handled stiletto, were his only resources from mission to mission ... though a great deal of luck and the frequent incompetence of his antagonists often played large roles in Carter making it through intact. 

Interestingly, Nick Carter, Killmaster was the reincarnation of another literary figure to first emerge in the U.K. After Arthur Conan Doyle first premiered his master sleuth Sherlock Holmes, American magazines scrambled to jump on the trend. By far the most popular and bestselling was "Nick Carter, Master Detective," published by Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. Carter appeared and reappeared from novel to novel until the early 1950s, and was known for his creative, if cumbersome, methodology in capturing ne'r-do-wells. He often wore disguises to "get his man," sometimes resorting to dressing in drag. Later in the series (and even in a short-lived radio show), Carter relied less on his cunning deductive skills, applying intimidation and often brute force.


Anyhow ... "14 Seconds To Hell" was probably the most outlandish of all the Killmaster paperbacks. I remember reading it during my last semester in college, probably within the space of just a few hours. For the life of me, I can't recall the meaning behind the title. To me, it's eye-catching and somewhat repellent. It's a title that's clumsy in its verbiage, but compelling, wrapped up nicely with the promise of, if nothing else, explosive action.


Though I don't promise action or adventure, I fully intend this blog to be straight-and-narrow in its preaching and meandering in its conjecture. I want to be serious and speculative in equal measure. But if nothing else, I want it to be an accurate reflection of who I am, what I believe, and where I wish to go. Makes no sense, does it? It's cool ... I'm just as lost as you. We'll make it, though. With flashlight in hand, we venture forward, cuttling like a machete through the tangled amazon of idle chatter in the blogosphere.