Batman (1967) – The Contaminated Cowl, and The Mad Hunter Runs Afoul

The Mad Hatter (David Wayne) has made his escape from prison and has returned to Gotham City with a dastardly plan to bring Batman (Adam West) down by stealing his cowl and adding it to his collection, something he’s working on as he attends the annual headdress ball. Charles Hoffman wrote this two-part story, and…

Sharksploitation (2023) – Stephen Scarlata

Sharks. Since Peter Benchley’s iconic 1974 novel, Jaws, they have been a ready-to-use monster for Hollywood moviemakers. With Steven Spielberg’s big-screen adaptation of the novel, sharks became the ‘it thing’ for films. However, they were arguably already on their way to being cast as the baddie thanks to some casting in the 60s Bond films….

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) – Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks skewers the legend of Robin Hood with his 1993 film Robin Hood: Men in Tights. None of the versions created are safe, and Cary Elwes is perfectly cast as the iconic hero that from its opening moments takes shots at everything, nothing is safe. Using the classic tale of Robin of Locksley coming…

Hill Street Blues (1985) – An Oy for an Oy, and Fathers and Huns

Belker (Bruce Weitz) is worrying about Robin’s (Lisa Sutton) pregnancy, and where their relationship is going. He’s thinking about marriage. But he’s also having a problem with a pair of brothers (Michael Lerner and Alex Henteloff) who seem to be screwing one another over for some diamonds, and Belker is caught in the middle. An…

Evil Dead Rise (2023) – Lee Cronin

Lee Cronin wrote and directed Evil Dead Rise a nice new spin on the classic horror franchise that promises the ultimate in grueling horror. As much as I love the originals, and Bruce Campbell, I love that the new films have eschewed some of the comedic elements and really leaned into the brutal gore and…

Batman (1966) – The Sandman Cometh, and The Catwoman Goeth

The Sandman (Micheal Rennie) is in Gotham, and for the first time in the television series, a supervillain pairs up with another master criminal, in this case, Catwoman (Julie Newmar) in this two-parter was written by Charles Hoffman and Ellis St. Joseph who also came up with the orghinal story, but exited after Catwoman was…

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Peacekeepers (1988) – Gene DeWeese

The second original novel in The Next Generation book series came out om September of 1988, two months before the premiere of season two. The crew of the Enterprise comes across a strange derelict starship and when Data and LaForge investigate they are transported away, leaving Captain Picard and the rest struggling to find out…

Odds On (1966) – Michael Crichton

While Michael Crichton was in med school he wrote a series of novels under the pseudonym John Lange, and that seemed like a good place to start if I was going to explore Crichton’s writing, revisit some I knew (like Sphere the other week) and discover some new favorites. Odds On is a crime thriller…