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Post by valdemar on Dec 2, 2012 9:48:50 GMT
One of my favourite books by Wheatley - almost impossible to categorise, but a ripping yarn nonetheless. I'd group it with 'They Found Atlantis', and the very peculiar 'The Man Who Missed The War'. I haven't read it for ages, but I found the DVD of Hammer Films 'The Lost Continent', which is based on 'Uncharted Seas', and, near the beginning, I was amused to see Nigel Stock's character reading a copy of the source novel - which is the same edition as I own with the large black bug on the cover. Blatantly done!
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Post by franklinmarsh on Mar 15, 2013 13:38:34 GMT
I reread it a while back (yes, that edition) and was unimpressed I'm afraid. I watched the film this week and it's one of the most delirious brilliantly hopeless wonderful pieces of cinema ever made. I'd watched my 49th Jess Franco film, The Girl From Rio just before which had reminded me of Danger : Diabolik and Barbarella and them 1968 bonkers psychedelic bouts of craziness. (The Man From UNCLE's The Karate Killers also helped). The Lost Continent, with it's absurd monsters, sweaty, fever-pitched, alcohol and sex and violence obsessed crew and passengers, lunatic boy king, Dana Gillespie's heaving balloons and the general air of not knowing what on Earth is going to happen next is simply extraordinary and is a fitting companion to those others.
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Post by valdemar on Mar 19, 2013 8:42:47 GMT
'Dana Gillespie's Heaving Balloons'- Early '80's indie band from Droitwich, weren't they?
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Post by valdemar on Mar 24, 2013 9:26:44 GMT
I always liked the theme song for the film. The vocalist sounds like the late, very great Terry Callier - anybody know if it was?
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 24, 2013 11:22:57 GMT
I always liked the theme song for the film. The vocalist sounds like the late, very great Terry Callier - anybody know if it was? The Hammer soundtrack album quotes a band called 'The Peddlers' if that's any help. The score to LOST CONTINENT is a bit odd - Benjamin Frankel, Howard Blake and Gerald Schurmann were all involved in writing different scores & what ended up on the screen is a bit of a muddle!
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Post by cromagnonman on Mar 2, 2016 15:20:22 GMT
One of my favourite books by Wheatley - almost impossible to categorise, but a ripping yarn nonetheless. I'd group it with 'They Found Atlantis', and the very peculiar 'The Man Who Missed The War'. [img src=" i411.photobucket.com/albums/pp195/Cro-Magnonman/44a93043-a6ed-4ef1-ab1c-b3a632f8c574_zpsezuu8ikd.jpg" style="max-width:100%;" src="" alt=""] Hutchinson evidently felt the same way. Hence this rather smart omnibus edition from 1952. The local charity shops and house clearance depots have yielded several compendiums of this sort over the years, featuring the likes of Rafael Sabatini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've noticed that nearly all of them date to the mid 1950s. There seems to have been a fad amongst publishers for collecting an author's themed novels together at that time. Would be interested in seeing any other examples fellow vault denizens might be harbouring on their shelves.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 2, 2016 22:18:58 GMT
The local charity shops and house clearance depots have yielded several compendiums of this sort over the years, featuring the likes of Rafael Sabatini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've noticed that nearly all of them date to the mid 1950s. There seems to have been a fad amongst publishers for collecting an author's themed novels together at that time. Would be interested in seeing any other examples fellow vault denizens might be harbouring on their shelves. Not a solitary one of them in this reader's case, but, if you've not seen it, thought you may be interested in this listing of Dennis Wheatley: Omnibus editions, which looks to be comprehensive. Wouldn't mind the 'Black Magic Omnibus.'
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Post by jamesdoig on Mar 4, 2016 20:57:42 GMT
The local charity shops and house clearance depots have yielded several compendiums of this sort over the years, featuring the likes of Rafael Sabatini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've noticed that nearly all of them date to the mid 1950s. There seems to have been a fad amongst publishers for collecting an author's themed novels together at that time. Would be interested in seeing any other examples fellow vault denizens might be harbouring on their shelves. That's a nice dust jacket! I've got a few, but nothing all that interesting - some Conan Doyle omnibuses, eg the Prof Challenger novels, Sherlock Holmes long and short stories, historical novels. Odhams brought out some odd compilations and giant anthologies, so I've a dusty old book called Four Great Mystery Novels from 1948, which consists of Freeman Wills Crofts The Cask, Edgar Wallace's The Terror, Graham Seton's The W Plan and Leonard R. Gribble's The Secret of Tangles - not themed though. Hodder & Stoughton did lots of compilations - I've got this Dr Thorndyke compilation, and the back cover lists various others. This one is a 1930s reprint, but it was first published in 1929 - I think a lot of them, like the Doyle omnibuses, started in the 20s and 30s, like those giant anthologies brought out by newspapers to sell subscriptions.
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Post by cromagnonman on Mar 6, 2016 10:45:33 GMT
Thanks for the link Dem. No, I hadn't seen this and yes, the Black Magic Omnibus appeals to me too. But it would have to come from another lucky find at the charity shop considering the premium that the second-hand market attaches to this volume over the others in the set. Not that charity shops yield much of interest these days. Not since they all adopted delusions of grandeur about being upmarket boutiques and began flogging off any old books they were donated for pulp instead of offering them for sale. Scandalous. The majority of my Arrow Wheatleys came from charity shops back in the day. He used to be a ubiquitous fixture of them. But I can't recall now the last time I ever saw one of his books there.
Going back to the Black Magic Omnibus: probably a lot more convenient simply to buy the recent Prion edition. Even if it does substitute GATEWAY TO HELL for STRANGE CONFLICT.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 6, 2016 21:17:09 GMT
Not that charity shops yield much of interest these days. Not since they all adopted delusions of grandeur about being upmarket boutiques and began flogging off any old books they were donated for pulp instead of offering them for sale. Scandalous. The majority of my Arrow Wheatleys came from charity shops back in the day. He used to be a ubiquitous fixture of them. But I can't recall now the last time I ever saw one of his books there. So true. I no longer donate books to charity shops for that very reason. Any surplus now goes to the Little Free Library Project - it's just a shame they don't have a box on every street corner. The Wheatley site was the brainchild of our friend and colleague, the late Bob Rothwell, who set out to collect every edition of every DW title, utilising car boot sales, charity shops, etc. He told us it took him two years all told. Ten years on, you wonder if he'd have managed it in triple that time without bankrupting himself in the process. S R Boldero (Arrow, 1960) Blurb: In the face of an Atlantic hurricane, two girls and a boatload of men, of all races and colours, pit their strength against the appalling rigors of the open sea. Tension mounts; so the desirable Synolda is forced into the arms of a man who holds her past as his ace. Only blood can satisfy the hatred in her lover’s eyes. There is mutiny and murder before the unrelenting Sargasso weed entombs them all. But suddenly land is sighted — land unmarked on the chart, concealing unimaginable horrors. Killer crabs are tame beside the lusts of the creatures that hop across the stinking weed. Only the two girls, Unity and Synolda, can tell their menfolk the meaning of the iniquitous Marriage House.
The ending of this ship-wreck saga is one that only the imagination of Dennis Wheatley could conjure.
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Post by cromagnonman on Mar 7, 2016 18:40:07 GMT
Thanks for sharing that one, James. Very much one from the Art Deco period. Nice.
I take your point about these omnibuses starting out during the 30s. I was rummaging away in the basements of Charing Cross Road today - like the good little hunter/gatherer that I am - and came across an AEW Mason compendium of the Inspector Hanaud novels. It was a reprint from - surprise surprise - the 1950s, but the original edition was dated 1931.
CAPTAIN'S LOG SUPPLEMENTAL: Have only just now appreciated that its one of the titles listed on the back cover you posted. Making my above comment utterly superfluous.
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Post by jamesdoig on Mar 7, 2016 20:37:19 GMT
I was rummaging away in the basements of Charing Cross Road today - like the good little hunter/gatherer that I am - and came across an AEW Mason compendium of the Inspector Hanaud novels. Nice find - there a less and less of these things around.
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Post by cromagnonman on Mar 8, 2016 8:31:49 GMT
I see that Boldero cover Dem, and I'll raise you a front and back movie tie in edition. Curious fact about Boldero. The only artist other than co-creator Jim Holdaway or unsung hero Mike Codd to have provided a cover illustration for the original set of Modesty Blaise hardcovers: THE IMPOSSIBLE VIRGIN 1971.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 8, 2016 9:07:01 GMT
I see that Boldero cover Dem, and I'll raise you a front and back movie tie in edition. Curious fact about Boldero. The only artist other than co-creator Jim Holdaway or unsung hero Mike Codd to have provided a cover illustration for the original set of Modesty Blaise hardcovers: THE IMPOSSIBLE VIRGIN 1971. That is indeed lovely, particularly like the front cover. Would the Charing X basement you refer to be Any Amount Of Books? There are a few of us been known to loiter in there. I'm still in mourning for 'Lovejoys' across the road.
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Post by pulphack on Mar 8, 2016 9:50:00 GMT
There's only two basements now, isn't there? Lovejoys' was always the porn bit, the Quintos on the corner is a Patisserie Valerie now, and there's the other bit of Quintos up the road that has a basement, but that tends to be a bit too upmarket to house an AEW Mason omnibus! HAS to be Any Amount - further proof that CroMagnon Man is in the right place!
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