Just picked this up last weekend and havn't had a chance to read that much of it yet. I'm not very familiar with the Euro Spy films so I don't know how well this really covers the subject, but some of the reveiws are pretty funny and there are some that make me want to track down the films so that's a point in the book's favor. Has anyone with more knowledge on this subject seen the book yet? Has anyone reviewed it yet?



http://www.midmar.com/

I'd better keep quiet on this one!

Matt B
http://www.erratica.co.uk

Glad to hear that the publishers are back in biz! Last couple of conventions I attended (over last 3 or 4 years or so), I saw them blowing out a lot of their stock for $3 and $2 (Man, did I get a lot of books from them). I congratulate the authors for at least getting this published. University press McFarland showed little interest in a similar project I pitched their way a few years back, and ended up going with a failed similar work (when they completely forgot about my originally pitched idea-- I can tell you a lot about what goes on with those guys!).

Anyway, I am eager to see this book, moreso because I secretly love those Euro Spy films of the sixties and have what I believe is a complete collection of them- whoo-boy! Whatever happened to those rugged heroes? I covered a lot of the bad girl femme fatales in my Mcfarland book Film Fatales- Women in Espionage Films and Television Shows 1962-1973 (Mcfarland), co-authored with Tom Lisanti (who just released Drive-In Dream Girls from same publisher.
Louis Paul

Hey Louis,

You have a book Italian Horror Directors coming out soon... when? and tell us more about the book and McFarland.

Hi Dave,
Thanks for asking about the book. Whew! Another Mcfarland nightmare. Italian Horror Directors (dull title, huh?), is an expanded version of a book I had written in '98 originally called Inferno Italia (published in Germany), a semi-lavishly illustrated (sadly no pics from my collection, but a lot of rarities from the collection of a Harald Dolezal).

Anyway, since then I've been writing and re-writing and working hard on this project. I first submitted my proposal and manuscript (nearly 1000pgs.) 2 yrs back. Editors there claimed the project was too big (it covered every major and minor Italian genre, and also concentrated on particular directors)... Anyway. after I cut it down, they then said it needed to be pumped up again (do editors realize how much work goes into doing this...especially when I present a project that I thought was essentially completed and ready to go?)...

So, then we haggled over the pictures...I wanted to use rare items borrowed and scanned from friends...quality of pics became an issue...image count went up and down to the point even I'm not sure what's in there...And, I had hoped the book would be out this Fall, but it does not look like it. Maybe December 2004 (which is Winter) or January 2005. The latest hold-up haggles over Italian language titles vs. the way they appear in the imdb... DUH! I only used source prints (in Italian language), Italian language reference books, and a lot of UK zines (delirium, etc.) that I believed were correct. I implored the senior editing staff not to use titles as they appear grammatically in the imdb, but right now...box o' books should be making their way to me...and anyone else shortly.

Long and short of this story...I'm switching to another publisher with my next project- interviews with genre film character actors. It is a Q & A format project with dozens of juicy interviews with folks the likes of David Carradine, William Smith, Don Stroud, Ed Lauter, Marrie Lee (of the Filipino Cleopatra Wong movies fame), Madeline Smith (Frankenstein & the Monster from Hell), John Saxon, and dozens more. It'll be my best project. But, please don't think there's anything unworthy in Italian Horror Film Directors... I think it'll be a good book both for the informed and unimformed....

It's just that there seems to be often little or no communication between the writers and the editing staff at this company, and very little support...and oh yeah...I spent more money on reproducing the images that appeared in Film Fatlaes (my last book) then I made in royalties resulting from three pressings of that book. Live and learn, life goes on, and I have more projects up my sleeve.

My copy of Matt Blake (is he related to a secret agent of the same name? No wonder he likes this subject), and David Deal's The Eurospy Guide FINALLY arrived today. I'd been tracking it via my retro-look USPSpectrescope technology -hopelessly frustrated, grimacing and bugging my eyes out like a perturbed Gastone Moschin- as it sat in the Van Nuys delivery place not moving for the last several days. Now I understand. That's how long it took the clerks to read it and pass it along to several friends before resealing and routing it my way. I'd do the same if I were them. This is very addictive, informative as well as amusing stuff. The informativeness lies less in overlay of Information culled from old sources (though I'm not finding mistakes so far for those elements I'm acquainted with)...than in the Informed quality that comes from having watched tons of these films avidly, and having deduced, inferred, pieced together the styles, the themes, the local-temporal connections between them that count.

And it's consistently entertaining as personal interpretation-reenactments of many movies (an art that everyone tries, but that few can master).

Since the duo has not yet taken advantage of the Amazon.com "Inside the Book" option (check your space there, guys, the merchants are offering to let you use it), I'll take the liberty of quoting totally at random from, let's see, a review on page 115 of JAMES TONT, OPERAZIONE DUE...just to give you all a flavor:

"...the villain mucks with the controls of the bath, freezing Tont into a block of ice. Well, it's better than flushing yourself down the toilet, as he did in the previous escapade. Fortunately, the Intelligence Agency is able to defrost him and, with criminals around the world believing he is dead, he is easily able to slip into another identity. Unfortunately, the identity happens to be "Bingo Kowalski", a jiving beatnik who looks frighteningly similar to Jimmy Saville. His mission is to infiltrate "the scene" and discover the whereabouts of a missing lump of uranium. This situation obviously gives him the opportunity to ingest far too much LSD, and he immediately starts seeing his boss speaking to him from the artwork of a cigarette packet."

Deviously underhanded and understated deviations from strict movie reality in that last sentence, I suspect, but all the more drolly effective for it. Note, that's 'drolly effective', not 'tweely affected', big difference there. This is GOOD British humor (mind you, employed only when the films themselves invite the approach; this is not mock-the-films time, at all, but a labor of love on both writers' part, and the writing style adjusts to whatever the occasion, like one of those efficient and handy all-in-one-gadgets spies are addicted to), as well as a fine lost genre excavation and salvage job.

Good review James and I agree with your note in the final paragraph. I own a lot of British zines and it's reassuring to know that Matt and David have followed the honourable tradition of being humorously offhanded whenever its appropriate, rather than relentlessly snide whenever possible. For me, the other danger with some UK tomes is when the writer pushes hard in the opposite direction and abstracts the material to the extent that signs and signifiers and psychoanalytic terminology are a requirement, every visual trope is described as being shown in a 'fetishistic' manner, and Lacan, Barbara Creed, Laura Mulvey and others get a mention every second paragraph. I call this the Xavier Mendik curse.

I'll definitely be getting this book. I still reach for the DELIRIUM softcover and Adrian Smith's giallo guide, and wish that there were similar volumes (from different authors) on spaghetti westerns and Italian crime films. Equally, I wish that there were more volumes on these genres from different authors - anyone digging into Welles or Hitchcock (or pick your preferred choice) can take their pick from Naremore or Spoto or whoever takes their fancy - genre fans in the west are largely restricted to the above volumes I mentioned or the back pages of indepth websites. (Books on Dario Argento are becoming the obvious exception to this, probably due to his popularity and the fact that he's still working). I still mourn the fact that Craig Ledbetter's giallo guide never came to fruition, and wish that I had three quality books on Fulci rather than one. Matt and David's volume is a lovely addition to the field and I look forward to the possibility of other writers giving us some Euro-specific books in the future. (What's the likelihood of Tim Lucas' Bava bio being as thick as all my other Euro volumes combined?)

Probably, Pretty good. ;)

And, while you are waiting for your copy of Matt, David and Tim's books to arrive, a very good palate cleanser for pure-spy and DIABOLIK-variety pleasures ahead is the easily available DVD of DEADLIER THAN THE MALE. While not truly representative of average Eurospy, it is the very acme of Counterfeit-Bond, a fascinatingly slick simulation of the real thing.