Tor.com Alert 11/30/10

After a semi-voluntary one-week hiatus, I’m back in the saddle again with the latest installment of my “Richard Matheson—Storyteller” series on Tor.com.  This one covers the first part of his association with Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis, and although I have mixed feelings about Curtis in general (plus a penchant for harping on his tendency [...]

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By the Numbers

Believe it or not, it’s been almost fifty years since Swiss goddess Ursula Andress arose from the sea, clad only in a white bikini with a knife at her hip, and set the standard unbelievably high for all future Bond girls in 007’s first big-screen adventure, Dr. No (1962).  That’s only tangentially related to the [...]

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Random Harvest

A few random thoughts as we celebrate Harvest Home:  first, while I was working on last night’s obituary for Ingrid Pitt, I went to insert a link to my B100 review of Where Eagles Dare, only to discover that there was nothing to link to.  That’s right, I must have been so busy doing whatever [...]

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Beloved Vampire

Presumptuous though it may be, when someone I’ve interviewed dies, I always feel like I’ve lost one of my own, and this is truer than usual in the case of Ingrid Pitt, who left us Tuesday at 73, although she seemed far younger—fitting for a star who embodied a vampire more than once in her [...]

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The Thrill of It All

I realize the expression “late to the party” doesn’t even begin to describe my situation, but now that John Scoleri and Peter Enfantino have expertly explicated all 67 episodes on their ambitious and highly entertaining blog A Thriller a Day (ATAD), I finally have the Image Entertainment 14-DVD boxed set of the entire series.  (It [...]

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Tor.com Alert 11/16/10

I apologize for the minimalist nature of this post, which is basically intended to let you know that as usual, you can find the most recent installment of my “Richard Matheson—Storyteller” series, devoted to Duel, on Tor.com.  I’d hoped to be able to share some more news about the book, but after that first flurry [...]

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Ignorance of the Lawman Is No Excuse

When Richard Matheson published Journal of the Gun Years in 1991, he won the Golden Spur Award for best novel from the Western Writers of America straight out of the gate.  This was quickly followed by The Gun Fight, the collection By the Gun, the horror-tinged Shadow on the Sun, and the fact-based The Memoirs [...]

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Dino’s Paradox

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that the name of Dino De Laurentiis, who died on Thursday at the ripe old age of 91, conjures up mixed emotions in me.  On the one hand, he produced David Lynch’s Dune (1984), which—despite its many detractors and my own bitterness over Lynch’s inability (or unwillingness) [...]

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Tor.com Alert 11/9/10

Well, Tor.com has actually formalized the whole “Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day” thing, noting today that, “Every Tuesday, Matthew R. Bradley takes us through the career of Richard Matheson,” and sure enough, there’s my latest post, devoted to Hell House.  The funny thing is, it didn’t start out to be that formal; it was just [...]

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It’s Always About Me

Although this post was inspired by the recent deaths of two figures in the entertainment world, I wish to stress at the outset that is it is not an obituary per se. I have neither the first-hand knowledge of their careers nor the time to research them sufficiently to write proper obituaries. It is more [...]

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