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National Podcast Day: The Interview Is the Raw MaterialJack Kerouac Day: The Scroll and the Last AddressRobert E. Howard Day: The Texan Who Built ConanHarper Lee Day: The Draft Her Editor Saw ThroughHarry Potter’s Birthday: The Book Twelve Publishers MissedTell a Fairy Tale Day: The Stories Everybody EditedKurt Vonnegut Day: The Book That Took Twenty YearsSuperman Day: The $130 Contract Behind the CapeMaya Angelou Day: The Dare That Became a MemoirInternational Translation Day: The Invisible AuthorsJohn Steinbeck Day: The Reporter Who Wrote the NovelRaymond Chandler Day: The Novelist Who Started at FiftyEncourage a Young Writer Day: The Adult Who Read the PagesF. Scott Fitzgerald Day: The Masterpiece That FloppedInternational Literacy Day: The Readers Books LoseGene Roddenberry Day: The Pilot Who Pitched the StarsIan Fleming Day: Two Thousand Words a MorningFyodor Dostoevsky Day: The Novels Written Against the ClockElmore Leonard Day: Leave Out the Part Readers SkipEmily Dickinson Day: The Poems in the DrawerAlice’s Day: The Story Told on a Rowing BoatStephen King Day: The Daily Two ThousandZora Neale Hurston Day: The Ear She TrainedNational Library Lovers Month: The Building a Town Pays ForBack to the Future Day: The Script Where Everything Pays OffRoald Dahl Day: Six Pencils and a Grudge Against Grown-UpsElmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, and Which Ones I BreakShould Your Novel Have a Prologue? When a Cold Open Earns Its Place“People Who Use AI Deserve to Be Castrated”: When the Sentence Outruns the CrimeHow Famous Memoirs Were Really Written: What the Collaborators DidThe Sage of SagittariusThe Bell JarCampus BattlefieldRadioLifeL.L. Bean: The Making of an American IconA World at Arms: A Global History of World War IIShattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of MidwayOpen: An AutobiographyPa’anIt Doesn’t Take a HeroLove’s Executioner and Other Tales of PsychotherapyA Tiger among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam’s A Shau ValleyThe Columbia Restaurant: Celebrating a Century of History, Culture, and CuisineThe Library BookThe Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st CenturyFlorida RoadkillAmerican SoldierThe MAGA DoctrineStop, in the Name of God

National Podcast Day: The Interview Is the Raw MaterialJack Kerouac Day: The Scroll and the Last AddressRobert E. Howard Day: The Texan Who Built ConanHarper Lee Day: The Draft Her Editor Saw ThroughHarry Potter’s Birthday: The Book Twelve Publishers MissedTell a Fairy Tale Day: The Stories Everybody EditedKurt Vonnegut Day: The Book That Took Twenty YearsSuperman Day: The $130 Contract Behind the CapeMaya Angelou Day: The Dare That Became a MemoirInternational Translation Day: The Invisible AuthorsJohn Steinbeck Day: The Reporter Who Wrote the NovelRaymond Chandler Day: The Novelist Who Started at FiftyEncourage a Young Writer Day: The Adult Who Read the PagesF. Scott Fitzgerald Day: The Masterpiece That FloppedInternational Literacy Day: The Readers Books LoseGene Roddenberry Day: The Pilot Who Pitched the StarsIan Fleming Day: Two Thousand Words a MorningFyodor Dostoevsky Day: The Novels Written Against the ClockElmore Leonard Day: Leave Out the Part Readers SkipEmily Dickinson Day: The Poems in the DrawerAlice’s Day: The Story Told on a Rowing BoatStephen King Day: The Daily Two ThousandZora Neale Hurston Day: The Ear She TrainedNational Library Lovers Month: The Building a Town Pays ForBack to the Future Day: The Script Where Everything Pays OffRoald Dahl Day: Six Pencils and a Grudge Against Grown-UpsElmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, and Which Ones I BreakShould Your Novel Have a Prologue? When a Cold Open Earns Its Place“People Who Use AI Deserve to Be Castrated”: When the Sentence Outruns the CrimeHow Famous Memoirs Were Really Written: What the Collaborators DidThe Sage of SagittariusThe Bell JarCampus BattlefieldRadioLifeL.L. Bean: The Making of an American IconA World at Arms: A Global History of World War IIShattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of MidwayOpen: An AutobiographyPa’anIt Doesn’t Take a HeroLove’s Executioner and Other Tales of PsychotherapyA Tiger among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam’s A Shau ValleyThe Columbia Restaurant: Celebrating a Century of History, Culture, and CuisineThe Library BookThe Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st CenturyFlorida RoadkillAmerican SoldierThe MAGA DoctrineStop, in the Name of God

The Writing King Your Ethical Ghostwriter. Your Story, Done Right.

Director: Robert Aldrich

Robert Aldrich worked in almost every genre and brought the same abrasive sensibility to all of them. Kiss Me Deadly ends with a nuclear briefcase opened in a beach house, an image so strange for 1955 that it has been reprinted and referenced ever since.

The Dirty Dozen and Attack are war films about officers as the enemy, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane turned two ageing stars into a horror premise and revived both careers.

He financed his own studio for a period and lost it. The films are consistently harsher than their studio contemporaries and consistently more interesting.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) film poster

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Foundation for Pulp Fiction's briefcase.

The Dirty Dozen (1967) film poster

The Dirty Dozen (1967) Review

The Dirty Dozen is the better-known cousin of The Devil's Brigade, released a year earlier in 1967 to massive box office success. This is going to be a different kind of review because the experience was different.