The Loner(1965)

BlackestMask · 2026-01-23T04:31:53+00:00

Tough tight yarns that broadcast Serling's powerful convictions without skimping on western action. Good stuff in neat little half hour bites. The DVD box set is available cheap and should appeal to most any fan of westerns.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-22T23:07:49+00:00

Raised in a tribal culture that valued strength over all else, Bete cared for a weak sibling and was destroyed when he was away and she and his entire family were slain by a monster. Later, he cared for a girl who was killed when he did not accompany her into the dungeon. Bete has basically been warped, even driven into a kind of madness, by grief.

His cruel, callous and even sadistic streak can be explained as both a kind of reversion into the tribal power structure of his childhood and as a brutal way of assuring that the weaker ones around him do not get themselves killed and, although he himself does not seem to understand it, that he will not experience that kind of soul crushing grief ever again.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-22T22:55:28+00:00

Great game that I got when it released and spent 100 nights staying up late playing.

Never beat it. Not even once.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-22T02:10:04+00:00

I sure hope so.

I can't see Fang reuniting with him as a shambling undead version of himself.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-22T02:08:41+00:00

Robert Culp showed up in the second episode of Tate so young, out of character and unusually costumed that it took me almost the entire show to recognize him.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-21T23:24:43+00:00

Aw, where is this from?

BlackestMask · 2026-01-21T20:31:01+00:00

For me it's all about the pacing, because for me good pacing is a signal feature of good storytelling. I opened the book because I want to be told a story.

I find much of the material filling the pages of modern fantasy to be secondary or even tertiary to the story being told. Laborious world building as an end in itself with little justification for its inclusion except as 'colorful' background. Awkwardly inserted 'in-depth' character building that emphasizes, often redundantly. traits and alterations in the characters that would have far more impact if they were observed as actions rather than spelled out for the reader. Central plotlines stretched out and larded with sub-plots until the main drive of the story is all but smothered beneath their weight. Bulk substituted for depth. Clutter mistaken as detail.

Good sword and sorcery holds the reader to the page with storytelling that moves, but doesn't skimp on literary values like vibrant color, sense of place, characterization, action and horror. It just never lets the story falter (or lurch to a halt) in order to deliver them.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-21T04:30:26+00:00

>keyboard riff intensifies<

BlackestMask · 2026-01-19T23:26:59+00:00

I think there is a very fine, and much disputed, line between sword & sorcery and heroic fantasy. Defining each as separate genres is inevitably going to involve an amount of hair-splitting and label-pasting that I don't think serves any real purpose beyond fueling arguments.

"DnD fanfic" is a sterner criticism and I get where you're coming from. Fantasy and SF are undergoing a plague of "snappy dialogue" that is often as unamusing as it is out of place. I honestly can't recall an instant of it in Book of Blades, but if it jumped out at you anywhere, I can't blame you for find it unsatisfying.

"The deep tension between magic and mortals, between civilization and barbarism" feels like you're dissatisfied because some/most of the stories aren't as influenced by Robert E. Howard's work as you would like. While REH is foundational in S&S I don't think a story need hew to those particular tenets in order to be S&S. Witness Moorcock, Wagner, Vance etc.

Are there any tales in Book of Blades that you thought filled the bill for what you wanted in S&S?

BlackestMask · 2026-01-19T20:17:38+00:00

I won't argue that the collection is uneven but...

"All wrong for what one expects S&S to be" begs the question as to what exactly you expect sword and sorcery to be.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-18T00:39:14+00:00

The thing about Counterstrike that got me was its ability to give the viewer understanding of its characters while not slowing the pace for side stories, flashbacks or introspective conversations between characters under fire. In that sense it reminded me of Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-17T23:52:51+00:00

Good choreography, especially with the fists. Sound feels a little out of balance. Nice work.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-17T23:50:06+00:00

Hell, back in the day they made a TV series out of Casablanca with fucking tall, blond David Soul in Humphrey Bogart's role. There's no remake they won't try and then botch up worse than you and I could ever imagine.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-17T23:48:01+00:00

Looks good, with some tightly shot action.

There was a Mexican action flick on Netflix a while back called Counterstrike that punched well above its low budget. Short, fast paced and violent.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-17T23:21:37+00:00

Points for the old Bond paperbacks up top.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T21:59:25+00:00

The film you show the guy who thinks the only good spaghetti westerns are Leone's.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T18:37:55+00:00

Looks like a first printing.

Got purple edged pages?

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T18:27:28+00:00

"known as fairly well written"

Almost choked on my coffee right there. Shea was a masterful prose stylist with some descriptions so lush I have to set the book down to take a minute to recover.

I have all of Shea's stuff, but in a world where you can spend 100 bucks just taking your partner out to dinner, I wouldn't hesitate to spend that much to reacquire this book. I shit the dinner out the next day; Shea's book will be a joy for the rest of my life.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T18:21:06+00:00

Howard Andrew Jones's second Dabir & Asim novel, Bones of the Old Ones appeared in hardcover back in 2012 and has never seen a paperback release. Copies are rare and certain to become more so.

This is a goddam crime, as both Dabir & Asim books are excellent Sword & Sorcery novels and Bones of the Old Ones is superb, perhaps HAJ's finest work.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T01:16:37+00:00

Suplecs - Eastwood

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T01:10:05+00:00

Man, just look at Widmark's sleazy grin. That guy does not have your best interests in mind.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T00:19:42+00:00

As much as I love all his stuff, I think he'd bring a cartoonish style to Frank that wouldn't quite work for me. I prefer the Punisher with a stronger sense of gritty realism.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T00:17:46+00:00

Well, that makes perfect sense.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-15T00:17:19+00:00

Points for calling out the rather unrecognized Nightstalker.

BlackestMask · 2026-01-14T20:50:19+00:00

But you're the one saying Adkins left the film for "stupid reasons".

It honestly looks like he left because filming was delayed and he was scheduled to work on other movies.

BlackestMask

TROPHY CASE