Eight dark short stories all with two things in common – Movies and Malice!

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  Below is the Introduction from the book!

It’s not surprising that I have written a collection of short stories that fall into a theme about movies. I’ve loved movies since I was young.

    I was born in New York City, which is one of the great places to live if you love movies.

   Back in those days, New York City television played an essential part in my movie development. New York TV was a treasure trove, a repertory theater filled with old films only with commercials. There was The Early Show, The Late Show, The Big Preview, The 4:30 Movie, The Late Movie, Five Star Movie, Chiller Theater, Picture for a Sunday Afternoon, Creature Features, and the best of all, Million Dollar Movie.

Though the timing of the editing was sometimes drastic and haphazard, you were exposed to many movies that otherwise would have been buried in the studio vaults and never seen.

   Many of the films Million Dollar Movie presented were from the RKO General vaults and was on every day. Each week MDM played the same movie sixteen times. Twice daily during the week and three times on weekends (when baseball was not in season). Its opening anthem was Tara’s Theme from Gone with the Wind (1939). I drove my mother crazy watching King Kong (1933) one week, Mighty Joe Young (1949) the next, soon followed by Godzilla (1956).   

   Television was also my introduction to the gangster/crime films I love, particularly the Warner Brothers flicks with its cadre of underworld stars: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and so many others. The first time I went to a movie theater on my own,

   I saw Baby Face Nelson with Mickey Rooney. The theater was the Loew’s Commodore (later to become the Fillmore East). The Commodore was located a few blocks from where we lived. All this activity led to my life of cinematic crime! 

   When I began writing, it seemed like a natural extension to write the type of stories I liked to watch and read. One of my earliest tales, The Green Light (a revised version is included here), was film-related. More recently, while working on my next short story collection, I realized about half of my new stories involved a movie theme. I soon had enough stories to put a book together with a movie-related theme. Out of this came the book you are reading, The Late Show and Other Tales of Celluloid Malice.    Of the eight stories included six are brand new. Two were previously published; the aforementioned, The Green Light (initially appeared in Murder with a Twist which is no longer available.). Finally, there is Benny and Slaughter originally included in Bitter Ends. I took the liberty of including it so that this collection of film-related themed tales is complete. Plus, I like the story and hope it will find new readers. I hope you enjoy it.