Last night's movie was "The Marked One"(1963), a very tight "ex-con-trying to go-straight" type of deal. "Don Mason" (William Lucas) is just out of prison after a two year stint, having taken the fall for a gang of counterfeiters. Now paroled, he's got "Masie" (Laurie Leigh), a young bar babe, for a girlfriend. He's also married, but figures his wife "Kay" (Zena Walker) probably doesn't wanna see him. In fact, she does, however, because all of a sudden she's getting phone calls and notes through her mail slot telling her that her 5-year-old daughter is being watched, and will soon be kidnapped if Don doesn't contact the messenger.
This is where the plot device kicks in, and it's an old one: locating the whereabouts of pristine counterfeit printing plates. At his trial, Don kept his mouth shut for his cronies, but he's not about to let his daughter get nabbed, so he semi-reconciles with his wife, who has a sexually abusive bar manager she has to dodge at work. Can he be the man behind the threats? A police detective visits Don at his dock job. He's also tracking the counterfeit plates, and tells Don, "it's best to cooperate, lest your file be red-flagged for the rest of your life."
Other former members of the gang are contacted, by Don and the detective in turn. All want out permanently from the counterfeit business - too deadly. More blackmail calls are made to Don's wife. He conducts his own investigation, looking not unlike Liam Neeson protecting his own daughter in the "Taken" movies. It's good stuff and gets Two Big Thumbs Up. The picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night, in "Recoil"(1953), "Nicholas Conway" (Kieron Moore), a black sheep criminal, is trolled by the daughter of an elderly jeweler he killed in a gang mugging. Conway is the cocky ne'er-do-well son of an elderly upper-middle class widow with a heart condition. His brother "Michael" (Edward Underoversidewaysdown), a straight arrow doctor, runs his practice out of Mom Conway's house. As the movie opens, Nicholas and his gang do the jewelry mugging, and the old man dies, but his daughter "Jean" (Elizabeth Sellars) is on scene and gets a look at him. Nicholas is injured in the subsequent fiery getaway accident that charbroils the rest of his gang. He goes to brother Michael to get patched up, and Michael also sets him up an alibi: "We'll say we were playing chess at home." This serves a dual purpose: to keep the police at bay, but also to prevent Mom from learning the truth about Nick's outlaw lifestyle and possibly having a heart attack (she thinks hes an insurance agent).
Jean, the dead jeweler's daughter, tries giving the cops Nick's description, but at first they don't take her seriously. "Let us handle it, we're CID." But she doesn't trust them and wants justice for her Dad, so she rents a room from Mom Conway at her mansion, where doctor Michael has his practice. Then she starts dating Michael, with a view toward getting close to Nicholas so she can get evidence against him in her Dad's murder. Nick's cockiness starts working against him when he threatens the big shot (Martin Benson) who set up the jewel robbery, and if there's one thing you don't do in a British B Heist flick, it's threaten Martin Benson. Nick should've known that before he signed on for the movie.
Everyone is converging on everyone else, but not in the Roadside Cafe sense. The layered plot is well unfurled this time. "Chief Inspector Trubridge" (John Horsley) is relentless in his hounding of suspects. He finally closes in on Nick Conway, but Jean is one step ahead of him, possibly with revenge on her mind. One implausibility is that Conway believes she's in love with him, and interested in fencing stolen jewels herself. She tricks him so he'll think she's got criminal tendencies. But a guy like Nick would never fall for it. He'd immediately be suspicious of such a chick because he'd trust no one. You've gotta suspend disbelief in this segment and say, "well, its his ego. He can't believe a gal would deceive him because he's too cunning and too irresistible." One guy who definitely can't be fooled is Martin Benson, who Nick was initially working for until he had the audacity to threaten him when the heist was over.
So by the end of the movie, Nick is on his own. He's got Jean against him (though he doesn't know it), and Benson's gonna kill him. The cops are closing in, and even his brother Michael won't protect him anymore, nor will Mom, even if she has a heart attack. It makes for the type of ending that would be perfect for John Garfield, where Nick, already shot, runs for his life on the waterfront, climbing wooden ladders in high-ceilinged warehouses.
It is imperative (and written into in Motion Picture Law) that you must climb ladders or catwalks or frameworks of some kind if you are a Cornered Desperado Who's Run Out of Time. Two Big Thumbs Up, and almost Two Huge, for "Recoil." Kieron Moore has Tom Jones looks, and an accent that's either hard Irish or Welsh, or Irish/Spanish. It varies throughout the movie. The picture is widescreen and razor sharp. ////
Now, in considering September 1989, we've mentioned Lillian and Howard Schaller, and for years we couldn't figure out their connection. At one point, desperate to figure it out, I even considered it had something to do with the closing of Metrocolor in August 1989, just weeks before the September Event. That was implausible, however, and I continued to ponder it until it hit me around 2018, that Lillian's connection had to be Dave Small. I should've had a ball-peen hammer on hand, to tap myself on the head and say, "Duh, Ad. What the heck took you so long?" Because we knew, all along, that Howard was a drug dealer. And Dave was the only other person who knew him besides me (Howard used to come into Mr. B's Flowers), and we knew all along that drugs were involved in 1989 (Howard mostly sold speed but I would imagine he could've scored coke.)
On a side note, I have now begun to suspect that Howard was in some capacity involved in the amateur porn angle, too, because owed money (money Lillian owed him) doesn't fully explain his all-out rage at Northridge Hospital. He actually threw his body on the trunk of our car as he hit the back window with a tow-chain. He was nuclear-meltdown enraged, trying the door handles, pounding the side windows, and calling Lillian all kinds of names, including the C and B words. "Get out here, you little....". Owed money doesn't explain that level of fury. He could've waited until the dust settled, and gotten his money back later, and furthermore, I doubt Howard would front 10 Gees in coke. I do believe there was money owed, but I think his fury was about something else, the potential exposure of the porn ring.
But enough about Howard for now, because he wasn't the only drug dealer involved. There was one other that I know of, a guy named Gary Patterson. Gary Patterson is (or was, if he is wonderfully deceased), a Sociopath's Sociopath. He wasn't nicknamed "Skull" for nothing. He was thin and had blonde hair, and eyes that were deader than a doornail's. In the late 1970s, Gary worked at a health food store in Granada Hills. That's where he met the evil David Friedman, who worked there for a time, as well. Gary came into some money in the early 80s, from a car accident and also an inheritance. He used the money to buy a music studio in the North Hollywood area (or maybe Sunland or Burbank). Gary was a bass player, and a good one. I actually jammed with him once. In the early 80s, he sold pot. I think I bought a dime off him once or twice, but Gary always made me uncomfortable. He seemed like an unfriendly, paranoid guy. He was thin as a stick, but there was something scary about him. He had dead eyes.
The evil David Friedman, however, became Gary's close friend, or at least close associate. By the late 80s (or maybe earlier), Gary had graduated to selling cocaine. He also had well-known musicians rehearsing at his studio, including Michael Schenker, and Glenn Hughes. Hughes was doing a lot of coke in those days. Mr. Friedman was present at some of his rehearsals in Gary's studio, and used to mimic Glenn saying, "Palp me, Bert!" - "palp" meaning "give me another line to make my heart palpitate." Now, I don't know who Bert was, and I love Glenn Hughes, who's been clean and sober for years and is a wonderful person, but I point this out to demonstrate that Gary Patterson was a well-known cocaine dealer in the NoHo rehearsal studio scene, and that David Friedman was, you could almost say, his right-hand man. He was certainly a constant presence around Gary. You see, for years, David was a major-league coke addict.
David used to tell me about carrying "bags of cash" (his words) on Gary's behalf. He also said that Gary was associated, at least peripherally, with the demonic (and wonderfully deceased) Eddie Nash, the monster behind the Wonderland murders. Eddie Nash was, of course, a cocaine kingpin.
Now, David Friedman was something of a sociopath himself. "Oh, yeah Ad? How's that?"
I'll tell you How's That. He's the guy who drove me to Gary's house so Gary could torture me. David's the guy who tied (or duct taped) my arms and legs to a chair. David also rode along, with the guy who masterminded the Zilch robbery driving, when the two of them drove me to Gary's house (a different house) up in the Sunland/Tujunga hills, so Gary could threaten to kill me. Luckily for me, the Zilch mastermind talked Gary out of it.
But why, you ask, would Gary give a hoot about me? I never bought coke from him (I didn't use cocaine). I never even saw him after about 1983, and I'd only ever seen him five or six times in my life, for mere minutes at a time, excepting the one time we jammed. For all intents and purposes, I did not know the SOB.
But he knew me, and it had something to do, once again, with drugs and Lillian. You see, she wasn't just connected to Howard Schaller through the late, great, but incredibly deceptive Dave Small. She was also connected to Gary Patterson, through the evil David Friedman, and possibly through the Zilch Mastermind also. And, in Gary's case, Lillian did owe him a lot of money. He appeared, at different places, at different times during the two-week-plus Event, asking about her whereabouts. And he had the evil David Friedman drive me (through deception) to a house at Wilbur and Valerio in Reseda, where they tied me up (or duct taped me) to a chair, and Gary threatened me with yet another stun-gun.
This began the Wilbur Wash Event, which is too detailed now to go into.
But that is the partial story of the evil David Friedman, and Gary Patterson, a Sociopath's Sociopath. ////
And that's all I know for the moment. I hope you are enjoying your Sunday. My blogging music is Mozart's Piano Concerto K467, my late night is Handel's Florindo Opera. I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxooxooxoxoxoxoxoooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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