Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies: Tough Guys Don’t Dance

 film noir, neo-noir, Norman Mailer, Tough Guys Don't Dance  Comments Off
Jan 082013
 
I just watched Tough Guys Don't Dance from a VHS cassette I found free in a thrift store. I'd seen it when it was new and I remember even writing a review of sorts about it, but I really don't recall anything I said. I have a vague feeling I liked the film, but other than some reflections on scenes here and there I didn't remember anything about it. I'm not even sure if I've read Mailer's novel, but again I have a nagging feeling in the back of my head saying I read it at the time.

If I liked the film the first time, I certainly liked it less this time. The film drags heavily at points and is too dialogue-ridden and some of the actors are pretty bad. The film is not very focused and gets confusing at times. There are some very bad moments (the famous "Oh man! Oh God!" scene, for example). This all said, there's something in Tough Guys Don't Dance that makes me want to proclaim it one of the precursors of the modern neo-noir films. The same delirious feeling permeating Mailer's film is also found in films like Romeo Is Bleeding (the Peter Medak one, not the later one) or Coens' The Big Lebowski. Scenes are disjointed, the characters are campily overacting, everyone is using cocaine and talking nonsense, womens' heads are cut off mercilessly, everyone's overusing sex to get to their goals. Maybe Mailer was truly ahead of his time?

One thing I remember thinking about Mailer's film is that it reminded me of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (very important early neo-noir film, that). There's a secret in the woods and there's also Isabella Rossellini (Lynch uses her much better, there's not much to do for her in Mailer's film). There's also Angelo Badalamenti's score, but that's about it. I sure didn't get the same feeling watching the movie now.

Mailer's film has one asset not enough films have: Lawrence Tierney. He's simply great in this and he has great lines ("I just deep-sixed two heads"), though he's pretty thin thematically - but that's Norman Mailer's fault. 

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog.

Tuesday’s Overlooked Film: The Strange One (1957)

 Ben Gazzara, film noir, Jack Garfein, Tuesday's Overlooked Film  Comments Off
Oct 162012
 

I think this one really qualifies as an Overlooked Film, especially in Finland, where it's never been shown in the Finnish Film Archive's screenings and it was last seen in TV in 1971. There is a rather recent DVD, but there hasn't been much talk about the film, at least in the venues I follow. I managed to see the film last Monday, when it was - for the first time, I believe - shown in the Film Archive screening here in Turku.

The Strange One was made in 1957, during a time when there was discussion on the new wave of American film making and the likes of John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Lionel Rogosin and Irving Lerner. Jack Garfein fits the bill perfectly. The Strange One is a somewhat noir-influenced film about sociopathic Ben Gazzara who bullies other cadets and freshmen around a military academy somewhere in the South. Gazzara, making his film debut here, is simply wonderful in his moves and gestures. He's great in that he makes sure he's actually the only likable character in the film, albeit his misanthropic attitude. All the other characters in the story are stupid or irritating, so the viewer gets to sympathize the wrong guy. There's a strong noir undercurrent in The Strange One, one we know from the work of Jim Thompson and Jason Starr.

You probably realize that "The Strange One" refers to homosexuality - the title could be given to a gay/lesbian sleaze paperback of the early sixties. There's lots of homosexuality in The Strange One, from the latent homosexuality manifested in Gazzara's violent threat to the obviously homosexual writer of the barracks who wants to call Gazzara "Nightboy", clearly a queer moniker. The depiction of homosexuals in the film isn't overtly sympathetic, though.

The ending of the film could've been stronger, but it also has a surprise not many can see. This is based on Calder Willingham's novel End as a Man - I have it, but have never read it, any comments on it? The script was also by Willingham, from the play he made from the novel.

The Strange One is an alluring film that was ahead of its time in its depiction of homosexuality and sociopathic behaviour behind the walls of an institution. Some have said it's an analysis of American fascism. Whatever name you give the phenomena it depicts, The Strange One is still a powerful film in its own, marred only by some staginess and some overblown acting. What's most curious about the film is that the director Garfein is an Auschwitz survivor! His other film, almost dialogueless Something Wild, seems also very interesting.

More Overlooked Films here.
 Posted by at 8:16 pm

Sidney Lumet: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

 film noir, Sidney Lumet  Comments Off
Sep 022012
 
There have been lots of raves about this movie, but I managed to see it only last night on Finnish TV. And indeed it turned out to be worth of the raves: a noir thriller worthy of the best Gil Brewers, Harry Whittingtons and every other working-class noir novel of the fifties and early sixties. It's great to see veteran director Lumet working at the top of his form.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are very good as Lumet's laymen who desperately need money for various reasons. They plan to rob the jewellery store of their parents. Of course everything goes terribly wrong. The family relations rise to front and the father, played by the great Albert Finney, gets suspicious. The ending is ironic and cruel and also plausible in every way.

If you like your noir believable and about ordinary people and not about sick, traumatized psychos, check this film out. If you like your noir without empty pastiche or knowing winks to the classics of the genre, check this film out.
 Posted by at 10:56 am

One False Move – Brilliant Film Noir

 film noir, films, Robert W. Fisher, Writing  No Responses »
Aug 102012
 

The cult classic One False Move was a very hard movie to find a few years ago, and during any of the years since 1992 when it was made. Originally intended as a direct-to-video (but brought to theatres due to extensive word-of-mouth), almost no video/DVD store has ever carried it.

It was barely available online. People I told about it over the years had to search near-endlessly for the damn thing.

This, even though it was rated a Top 10 film of 1992 by many critics and the Best Movie of The Year according to Gene Siskel.

It’s also one of the very few movies to receive a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It still has that 100%, even with current reviewers.

Starring Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams and Michael Beach, this violent crime thriller is occasionally almost too chilling to watch, mainly due to the sociopathic nature of the bad guys (Thornton & Beach).

For the great Bill Paxton, it’s the role of a lifetime.

As the local Chief of Police in tiny Star City, Arkansas, Dale ‘Hurricane’ Dixon, he steals every scene he’s in, whether dealing with the big-city L.A. cops chasing a trio of remorseless drug-killers to his hick town or shooting it out with the killers themselves.

Secrets from the past pour out as murder and mayhem abound.

When the video finally came out, I recall lending it to friends of ours, an older couple. I was then told the wife got up in the first ten minutes and said, “Sam, I can’t watch this.” After she left the room, my friend watched it for another fifteen minutes, then got his wife, brought her back, and told her:

“Mary, you’ve got to see this movie.”

It’s that good.

Full of nerve-jangling suspense, shocking violence and the darkest humor imaginable, One False Move ranks right up there with the equally brilliant crime thrillers, Blood Simple, written and directed by the Coen brothers, and True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.

The surprising fact about each of these movies is that they were firsts for each of the writers.

It’s well-known that Tarantino sold his first real screenplay, True Romance, to help raise the money he needed to make and direct Reservoir Dogs. The Coen Brother’s first movie, of course, was the amazing Blood Simple.

And One False Move was Billy Bob Thornton’s first script. Billy Bob wouldn’t do Sling Blade (1996), often considered his first real success, for four more years.

We were in Flint, Michigan when One False Move was released and, due to the rave reviews coming in from Los Angeles, we rushed to see it on the big screen. Luckily so, for it only played in Flint one brief week and then was gone, back to the big city.

Like Star City, Arkansas, I guess we’re considered a hick town here, too.

But it’s a good place to hide out and write.

My last crime thriller, Killing Liberty, written under the pseudonym Parker T. Mattson, is the first of five crime novels to be published by Black Mask featuring ex-Detroit PD homicide detective, Derek Raiford.

As the man who fell out the 10th-floor window said as he passed each floor on the way down: “So far, so good.”

Published by Black Mask and available as an exclusive Amazon Prime e-book before going into print distribution

 

Is there a movie you wish you HADN’T seen?

 Crime Films, film noir, films, Movies, Robert W. Fisher, Writing  No Responses »
Jun 252012
 

A Very Scary Gentleman

I’m certain I’ve seen many more movies than the average human. Comedies, thrillers, romances, dramas, mysteries and everything in-between.

I’ve gone to film schools in Hollywood, spent entire afternoons at triple features and belong to the Directors Guild of America. As a DGA member, I can attend any movie for free when I‘m in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago , Orlando or Miami. I either love or hate, or merely like or dislike, every movie I’ve ever seen. In a bad or boring movie, I can sometimes at least appreciate the cinematography, the music or a particular scene that works.

In other words, I absolutely love movies. All movies.

I have very definite opinions. And I always sit through the entire closing credits, to see if anyone I know has worked on it.

In addition, I believe one of the most violent movies of all time (A Clockwork Orange) is a masterpiece, full of the old ultra-violence and worth seeing multiple times if only for its endless dark humor and great dialogue. I also think Quentin Tarantino’s work (True Romance, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, etc.) is about the best there is, rivaled only by the equally brilliant Ethan and Joel Coen (Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, No Country For Old Men and their first & still best, the off-the-wall work of noir genius, Blood Simple). Add to those, at the top of the list, Carl Franklin’s and Billy Bob Thornton’s intensely shocking One False Move, virtually unknown even though it was on every critic’s Top Ten List in 1992, and you get the idea.

Movie violence does not offend me.

And yet, there actually is one movie I wish I hadn’t seen: Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Completed in 1986 on a super-low budget of $110,000, it wasn’t released widely (Rotten Tomatoes is wrong) until 1990. It was originally (deservedly) rated-X, but then was distributed without a rating.

Anyway, I know, I know:  it’s a brilliant movie, with cult status, as terrifying and as paranoid-inducing as any film that’s ever existed. Michael Rooker is undeniably excellent as the coldest of cold-blooded psycho’s, casually raping, torturing and murdering again and again, simply out of boredom, and videotaping all of it. As a virtually unknown actor at the time, Rooker was that much more terrifying as the serial killer from Hell.

Great. Yet I did not need those particular scenes, or certain images from the film, in my head, any more than I needed to witness a gruesome multiple car wreck.

In any case, in 1990 I was again living back in Flint, Michigan, even then considered one of the most violent (today it’s the most violent) cities in the country. I thought little of it, moving back, until we watched Michael Rooker as Henry and Tom Towles as his slack-jawed sidekick, Otis, late one night, killing their way through one innocent family after another.

To say I was unnerved by it would be serious understatement. Unhinged would be more like it. The film undoubtedly achieved the effect it desired, to scare the absolute hell out of anyone not Bruce Lee. I will give it that. And I sort of laughed it all off. It was just one more movie, after all.

But the next morning, I bought a Glock 17 and a 12-gauge Mossberg pistol-grip pump shotgun, which also had to be registered as a handgun. A very dangerous couple of weapons. Just in case. And I think I started carrying a switchblade knife, too.

Or maybe not.

But my advice, which you can take or not: if you’re ever looking for a date-night movie rental, maybe an older classic that you haven’t yet seen, I’d definitely pass on this one.

Shock Corridor

 1963, Crime Films, Crime Pulp, crime writing, film noir, Robert W. Fisher, thrillers, Writing  1 Response »
Jun 192012
 

The paperback

After reading the James Reasoner piece on Michael Avallone (The Return Of Ed Noon, June 18, 2012), I dug out my copy of Avallone’s novel based on the screenplay of Shock Corridor, the jolting 1963 movie that Sam Fuller wrote, produced and directed.

It’s been a long while since I’ve thought about either the movie or the book, but I believe they’re both worth tracking down. Even today, the story holds up, though it’s a little creaky in places (what isn’t, from 1963?), due to the Cold War paranoia throughout.

The book was a great read, the movie itself so harsh and chilling and in-your-face that it couldn’t be ignored. There isn’t a politically correct scene in it. There’s also not a boring step. Cigar-chomping Sam Fuller was just that kind of screenwriter and director.

And, of course, it’s a cult favorite with film students. For those who care what critics say, Shock Corridor still has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, in its 15 reviews from 2002 to 2011.

I first saw Shock Corridor in the 1970’s, well before I became good friends with actor James Best, who played Stuart in the film. It was one of the first films of his we discussed, along with The Left-Handed Gun, Firecreek, Rolling Thunder and Sounder. Years later, when I showed him I had the Shock Corridor paperback, he immediately signed it, ‘The most fun in my career, James Best.’

And it was the greatest fun to make, James said.

They shot it in 10 days flat, with almost no re-takes, entirely inside. To make the small asylum set look larger (and longer), Sam Fuller hired midgets as extras to move around at the end of the relatively short hallway. Several of the hallucination scenes were borrowed from Fuller’s earlier movies. Yet it’s far more than merely a schlocky 60’s picture.

In case you’re not familiar with the storyline, it’s very much high concept:

Peter Breck (Nick Barkley in The Big Valley) is a reporter willing to do anything to earn a Pulitzer Prize, so he has himself committed to a mental institution so he can solve a murder. To do so, he has his stripper girlfriend, Constance Towers, pretend to be his sister, who he’s sexually attracted to. In addition, he’s got a thing for her braids. Shocking (again), especially for 1963. Ka-blammo. He’s put away! And through a series of jolting electro-shock treatments he can’t avoid, he slowly goes crazier than any other lunatic in the joint.

When early in the second act he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a violent thunderstorm taking place in the hallway, you realize there’s not going to be a happy ending. Or when he gets trapped and almost killed by sex-crazed female inmates in the Nympho Ward. That’s right: the Nympho Ward.

Do they still have those?

Anyway, to solve the murder, he has to interview (during rare lucid moments) three wildly vocal lunatics:

Trent (Hari Rhodes), the first black student attending an all-white Southern university. Driven insane by racism, he thinks he’s the leader of the KKK and hates black people.

Boden (Gene Evans), a Nobel prize-winning nuclear scientist driven insane by guilt due to his work on the A-bomb and H-bomb. He’s reverted to his childhood. Mental age: six.

Stuart (James Best), a POW soldier in the Korean conflict who committed treason by joining the Red Chinese, then was traded back to our country. He believes he’s General Jeb Stuart, the Confederate army hero, fighting the damn Yankees.

I won’t say more, or give away any other twists, but the gradual character arc that occurs in Peter Breck, transforming him from a ruthless crime reporter into a raving, mindless psychotic, is more unnerving than many sophisticated folks today might imagine possible.

You can get the re-mastered Shock Corridor on Amazon. I believe it will linger with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COOL FLICKS: Sleep, My Love (1948)

 film noir, Movies, Tuesday's Overlooked Films  Comments Off
May 082012
 
From the opening sequence with Claudette Colbert waking in horror to discover she is on a speeding train headed to who knows where Sleep, My Love immediately catches the viewer's attention and never lets go. The blend of familiar crime film gimmicks (amnesia, hypnosis, Cainesque scheming lovers) are never boring due to the grand slam combination of a witty and suspenseful script by St. Clair McKelway and Leo Rosten (from his novel), top notch performances by an extremely well cast group of actors and frequent artistic touches from director Douglas Sirk.

Anyone familiar with the classic Gaslight will catch on fairly quickly to the basic plot.  Alison Courtland (Colbert) is being victimized by her philandering husband (low key and monotoned Don Ameche) who wants her locked up in the loony bin so he can live happily ever after with his lover Daphne, (sultry Hazel Brooks in a text book femme fatale role) a wicked city woman who works in a photo studio and likes to parade around in flimsy negligees.  Joining in this conspiracy to drive poor Alison out of her mind are Daphne's sinister photographer boss (menacing George Coulouris) and his mousy ill-informed wife (ubiquitous character actress Queenie Smith turning in another sharp portrait). Raymond Burr also makes a brief appearance in two scenes as a police detective.

Grace Vernay (Smith) finds a gun in Alison's purse
Charles Vernay (Coulouris) insulted once again by his negligee clad employee Daphne (Brooks)
Alison wonders what happened to the butler in her shadow filled home
Dick and Daphne drink, dance and deceive (Daphne wears her only dress in this scene)
Alison compares her husband to Bruce (Cummings) in a moment of drunken candidness
Colbert makes a fine victim here appropriately terrified and confused throughout most of the film. Unlike similar roles of the plotted against wife Colbert never comes across as cloyingly self-pitying. Nor is the noir plot as amoral and claustrophobic as something like The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Ameche and Coulouris do great work as conspiring villains but the very nature of the scheme involving drugs and hypnosis teeters on the brink of absurdity. Sirk counters this with nighttime interiors drenched in shadows and directs Ameche, an actor better known for light-hearted and comic roles, to deliver his lines in a menacing monotone and keeps his performance restrained and low key.  It's a subtle touch and it allows Ameche to carry off his villainous part with panache even as we watch him daintily stirring a cup of doctored cocoa.


The addition of two comic characters - Barby and Bruce - provide the story with a welcome breezy humor. Barby (Rita Johnson) is a mile-a-minute talker typical of the screwball comedies of the 1940s. She is the daffy urbane socialite so often found on screen but never in real life. Her part exists purely for laughs and Johnson does it extremely well - much better than Billie Burke might have done. Robert Cummings as Bruce is the playboy we know will be Colbert's savior. He has an easy suave nature, a charming city wit, and the brains to see through the scheming husband's plot at the very last minute.

The strangest sequence in the film seems like it belongs in another movie. While Dick and Daphne are slumming and scheming in a local dive Alison and Bruce go on an adventure.  Bruce has come to New York to be best man in his business partner's wedding and asks Alison as his date. Turns out the wedding is in Chinatown and his business partner is played by Keye Luke (Number One Son in the Charlie Chan flicks). With music provided by a Chinese string ensemble squeaking and whining in the background Alison proceeds to get delightfully drunk on Asian wine. The wedding reception turns into a series of bits lifted from a romantic comedy with Colbert showing off her exceptional comic acting skills then slowly confessing her dissatisfaction in her troubled marriage. Later Bruce tries to chauffeur the new bride and groom to their hotel in a well known resort, but Alison's misadventures at the hands of her murderous husband interfere.  It's an odd sequence played for laughs that seems very out of place in a film that spends much of its time building up a brooding and menacing atmosphere.


The framing and composition throughout the movie is hypnotic. You can't turn away for a minute lest you miss some artistic choices like those shown above. The way the teacup with the drugged hot chocolate can be seen so ominously in the foreground while Dick's soothing voice puts Alison's fears at ease.  Or how Daphne holds court (once again in a sexy nightie) in the photo studio while Dick in a passive position looks up at her completely under her seductive power.  The use of light and shadow in the nightmarish murder attempt scenes, the perfectly rendered sound effects like Coulouris running his fingernails creepily along the fabric of an upholstered chair, the brilliant use of the Queensboro Bridge as a backdrop for the nocturnal bedroom scenes, and the rousing finale complete with a shootout and pursuit up a staircase to the rooftop - they're all wonderful touches that show Douglas Sirk to be a true cinema artist.

Sleep, My Love is available via the Netflix streaming option or the entire film in a restored print (and not fragmented into parts) can be viewed for free at YouTube here.

Be sure to visit Todd Mason's Sweet Freedom and check out the rest of the insightful comments on unusual films, TV shows, video & audio creations for "Tuesday's Overlooked Films (and/or Other A/V)."
 Posted by at 6:00 am

Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies: Plunder Road

 film noir, Hubert Cornfield, Tuesday's Overlooked Film  Comments Off
Feb 202012
 
This is apparently a pretty rare late film noir, since it's got only five reviews in IMDb. I loaned this on a VHS cassette from a friend of mine, as I'd always wanted to see it, and while it didn't quite live up to my expectations, it's still a very worthwhile little thriller.

Plunder Road is a caper film, done on a minuscule budget, with limited sets and a small number of players, though the caper in the beginning of the film is quite far away from being minuscule. The film doesn't tell much about the guys who do the caper, but we are made known that some of them are career criminals and former inmates. The movie is about trying to take the loot to a safer place with three different trucks. It's a road movie, but the machines these guys drive are machines of imprisonment, not freedom, like they are in Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise. Likewise, the whole movie is intentionally mechanic, which increases the sense of irony. The players in the movie are nothing but pawns in the game. They struggle to get out, but because they do what they do, they have no chance.

There are some inconcistencies throughout that lessen the impact of the film, though, but not remarkably so. If you get a chance to see this, don't hesitate. All the actors are unknown (at least I didn't recognize the names of the faces), except Elisha Cook Jr., who's remarkably good in this as well. The writer, Steven Ritch, plays himself one of the crooks.

The director, Hubert Cornfield, is a very interesting figure in his own right: many of his few films were based on paperback originals: Lure of the Swamp is based on a Gil Brewer novel, 3rd Voice is based on a Charles Williams novel and The Night of the Following Day is based on a Lionel White novel. Later on he seems to have moved to France.

More Overlooked Films to be had on Todd Mason's blog. (At least I think there will be something. I won't have the time to do this tomorrow, so I did it already.)
 Posted by at 7:49 pm

Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies: The City of Fear

 film noir, Irving Lerner, Tapani Maskula, Tuesday's Overlooked Film  Comments Off
Feb 072012
 
Irving Lerner is not a household name, though he's been revered by some film noir enthusiasts for a long time, such as Martin Scorsese. Until last Monday night, I'd seen only his late and flawed conquistador film, Royal Hunt of the Sun. Now I've seen also his The City of Fear, thanks to the Finnish Film Archive. (Well, I organized the screening myself, but you know what I mean.) Thanks also to Tapani Maskula, a film critic from Turku, with whom I've talked about film noirs and other B-films for almost ten years now. Tapani was there in the screening to talk about Lerner, who seems to have had a very interesting life.

The City of Fear is a very tight little thriller about escaped convict Vince Edwards who thinks he's onto something when he gets his hand on a small metal cylinder. He thinks there's lots of heroin, but instead it contains radioactive material. Pretty soon he gets sick, but still tries to sell the "heroin". The ending is very ironic, even though there's something unintentionally funny about the radioactive bits in the film - what can you do, Lerner shot the film in seven days with a very low budget for Columbia who needed short films for drive-in theaters? Lerner was before everything else an editor, and this shows in many scenes as they are expertly edited, with verve, rhythm and style, with a touch of Russian montage here and there. Vince Edwards is very good in the lead role: he shows no empathy and you don't actually feel for him, but there's something about the empty stare that Lerner emphasizes with his shooting and editing. The facade reveals absolutely nothing, but the way Edwards fondles the cylinder in his pocket... there's something homosexual about the affair of the man and his fantasies.

I'm hoping to see more of Lerner's films: Murder by Contract (one of the all-time favourites of Scorsese), Edge of Fury (based on American surrealist Robert Coates's novel Wisteria Cottage), Studs Lonigan (from the James T. Farrell novel)... there are some others, too, but they seem to be too obscure. There's one here, take a look. The City of Fear and Murder by Contract are available in the Columbia film noir DVD set.

Tapani Maskula, whom I mentioned earlier, gave his speech about Lerner - I'd really like to read Lerner's biography. Anyone out there willing to do one? Tapani mentioned in the end that The City of Fear is the film that convinced him to become a movie critic.

Other Overlooked Movies here.
 Posted by at 8:52 pm

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