Month: March 2015

Review: Dread Journey by Dorothy B. Hughes

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Dorothy B. Hughes is a well-known hardboiled and noir writer from the 1940’s. Thanks to Mysterious Press for keeping these books in print and available.  She had 3 films made from her books: The Fallen Sparrow, Ride the Pink Horse and In a Lonely Place where all made in the classic film noir era.  I hope to review all three of these films at some point on this site.

Dread Journey is not as well-known as some of her other work and I actually choose this as my first Hughes book simply because it was on sale for little to nothing on my Nook when I was looking at her books.  This book is short, only 140 pages, but very dense, this is not an easy read.

This book is original in a lot of ways, the structure is not your typical murder mystery by any means.  This story takes place on a train called the Chief that is going from Los Angeles east to New York.  The train is full of entertainment types traveling for work.

The motley crew of characters include:

James Cobbett is a service man for the train and is there for everybody’s beck and call.

Les Augustin an orchestra leader, maybe to smart for his own good.

Hank Cavahaugh an alcoholic newspaper man who still has some pull.

Sidney Pringle was a tie salesman that wrote a book, and it has done fairly well.

Gratia is the beautiful fresh face that everybody is falling in love with and is innocent to the entertainment business.

Viv Spender, the rich and powerful film mogul.

Kitten Agnew is the famous starlet that is also Viv’s current girlfriend and muse.

Mike is Viv’s personal secretary and has been in love with Viv for years, though she is a plain-looking girl and does not catch Viv’s eye.

The interesting part of this story is we don’t have a murder towards the beginning of the story like most who done its.  This story revolves around Kitten, who know’s Viv has destroyed or killed his last muses when he was done with them.  She knows she is being replaced by Gratia, the new face that Viv has fallen in love with, though Gratia does not know this yet.  Kitten is smart and has used lawyers and contracts to make sure she will not be easily fired by Viv and his company.  She now realizes that the only way Viv is getting rid of her is killing her.  She is scared for her life so she surrounds herself with Hank, Sidney, and Les for protection on the trip.  Mike knows that Viv has killed his muses before, but because she has been loyal to him for years, she doesn’t know what to do in this situation.  James is our outside perspective of this whole situation.

Will Viv or Kitten win this battle of smarts and murder.  Will they all make it to New York, who will not make it?  This starts out a little slow as we learn about our characters and how they interact.  It’s a slow burn that turns into an inferno in the last third of the book.  I liked the originality of the book and think this would have made a great moody film noir in its day, but its first 100 pages of slow build up was a little too much for me.  Worth checking out for Hughes fans and I wish I would have went with one of her more popular books first instead of this one.

Re-watching the Classics: Road to Perdition

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Road to Perdition started as a graphic novel by noir author Max Allan Collins.  Max Allan Collins has written many books and worked on television shows and movies over the years.  The film is directed by Sam Mendes and is his second film, after American Beauty and is currently directing the James Bond movies, also starring Daniel Craig.  I haven’t watched this film since it was in theaters, it was the only Paul Newman film I ever saw in a theater sadly.

This was Conrad L. Hall’s last film, he won an Oscar for this film as well as 2 others.  He was nominated for another 7 films through out his career, his career included a number of classic neo-noir films. This has a lot of great classic noir shots thanks to Hall. This is also historic for being the last film Paul Newman starred in.  Newman plays John Rooney and Craig plays his son Connor Rooney.  The Rooney’s are based on real life gangsters by the name of Looney.  This story is also based loosely on actual events of an enforcer going rogue on the Looneys.

Tom Hanks plays that rogue enforcer, Michael Sullivan.  Who goes on the run after his son Michael Junior played by Tyler Hoechlin witness a gang land slaying.

Jude Law’s character used a lot of famous photographs from famed crime scene photographer Arthur ‘Weegee’ Fellig.  Fellig is portrayed by Joe Pesci in the film “The Public Eye”(I have not seen this film yet) and his first book of photographs inspired the classic film-noir “The Naked City”(great film and hope to re-watch this classic and post about it in the future) and its subsequent television series.

Stanley Tucci plays real life mobster Frank Nitti.  Nitti was the right hand man of Al Capone, though Capone is mentioned numerous times in the film, he never makes an on-screen appearance.

Road to Perdition is about 2 sets of fathers and sons, I recently noticed that the father-son dynamic is something more prevalent in today’s noir and not that common in the classic era of film-noir.  Has anybody else picked up on this theme? I loved this movie when I seen it in the theater 13 years ago and still love it.  If you haven’t seen it, search it out, if you haven’t seen it in a while, re-watch it again.

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Review: The Blue Dahlia

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So did anybody write better classic noir dialog than Raymond Chandler?  I don’t think so, his wise cracking P.I. Phillip Marlowe will always be one of the greatest fictional character of not only noir, but all of fiction.  Though we don’t have Marlowe in The Blue Dahlia, we are not missing on the crackling dialog.

Clean sheets every day they tell me.  How often do they change the fleas?

Seems I’ve lost my manners or would anyone here know the difference?

Joyce Harwood: Well, don’t you even say ‘Good night’?
Johnny Morrison: It’s good-bye, and it’s tough to say good-bye.
Joyce Harwood: Why is it? You’ve never seen me before tonight.
Johnny Morrison: Every guy’s seen you before somewhere. The trick is to find you.

You’ve got the wrong lipstick on, Mister.

‘Dad’ Newell: [examining Helen’s body] Been dead for hours.
Mr. Hughes, assistant hotel manager: Suicide?
‘Dad’ Newell: Could be.
Mr. Hughes, assistant hotel manager: Better be!
‘Dad’ Newell: Unh-unh! Too much gun!

I know I’ve got lots of faults, but being in love with you isn’t one of them, is it?

These are some of my favorite quotes from this film, and if it was just the dialog this would be a 4 out of 5 star film.  But Raymond Chandler doesn’t just write great dialog, he can put together a pretty good plot too.  This has three friends coming back from the war. Our hero is played by Alan Ladd, who goes to see his wife.  She is having a party and he soon finds out that she has a new beau.  The new boyfriend played by Howard Da Silva, owns the night club “The Blue Dahlia” for which the movie is named.  Soon our hero’s wife played wonderfully by Doris Dowling, she is just the right amount of evil that we can see why our hero wants free of her, but also the right amount of sadness that we feel sorry for her having to be by herself while her husband was at war.  She’s mad, but we understand why.  She is found dead and we don’t know if it’s suicide or murder.  The police start with the most likely suspects, which includes our hero.  Now he has to find the killer before he takes the fall for murder.  Along the way we have William Bendix playing Buzz.  Buzz is a great character who has some brain damage from the war, does he also have post-traumatic stress syndrome before we really knew what it was?    Then of course we have Veronica Lake who plays the night club owners wife.  I would call her the femme fatale of this film, but she doesn’t try to decisive anybody, or use anybody, or try to get away with anything, she’s actually a truly good person.

Raymond Chandler had to change his original ending and was not happy about this.  I will not tell you why or how it is changed here, because it is a spoiler and we don’t believe in that here, but after you watch it you can probably see what is changed and maybe even why given the time frame of when the film was made.

A couple of historic trivia bits for you.

1.  Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake appeared in a number of movies together and rumors started that they where having an affair.  Both always denied this, and it is not known if the rumors where true or not.

2. Elizabeth Short got her nickname The Black Dahlia from this film.  She embraced her new nickname and took to wearing a black dahlia flower in her hair.  She died less than a year after this.  She became the subject of the classic James Ellroy book and not-so classic film, “The Black Dahlia” and part of Los Angeles lore forever.

I really liked this film for its sharp dialog and surprising twists and turns.  A classic noir that all fans should see.

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News: Sundance is one step closer to a Hap and Leonard series!

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It looks like we are one step closer to bringing Hap and Leonard to the small screen.  I mentioned this possibility in my recent review of Joe Lansdale book and the movie Cold in July, and now we are getting more good news on the series.  Read all the details here:

http://http://www.nola.com/entertainment/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/03/hap_leonard_amc_sundance_baton.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Review: Gloria

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Gloria is a neo-noir film that showcases the gritty and grimy late 70’s New York City, the film was released in 1980.  This film is written and directed by the legendary John Cassavetes.  The Independent Spirit Awards, awards presented to independent film.  They have an award given every year named after Cassavetes.  Blue Ruin, a film I looked at earlier this year, was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award.  You can look at that review here:

https://everythingnoir.com/2015/02/10/review-blue-ruin/

Cassavetes only did two neo-noir crime movies, the other was The Killing of a Chinese Bookie from 1976.  This was also a good film worth checking out and I hope to re-watch it and review it later on this site.

Gloria is played by Cassavetes wife, Gena Rowlands.  Rowlands was nominated for an Academy Award for her role.  Gloria is a battle tested mob moll.  She shows up at a friend’s apartment to find the family in distress.  The family is marked by the mob for death and know it is happening soon.  The father played by Buck Henry has evidence in a book and they found out about it.  The family asks Gloria to take their son and hide him before the killers get to them.  She does and our adventure begins.  The son is played by John Adames in his one and only movie role.  Adames has flashes of brilliance with some well written lines and other times you can see he is just a kid with no acting experience and looks awkward and out-of-place. You can see Cassavetes got a lot of inspiration from old noir and gangster movies for his dialog in this film.

Gloria is a hardboiled female character, which in itself had to be pretty original for its time.  She has a feel of realism in Rowlands portrayal, she isn’t perfect and just, and struggles with what is the right thing to do and what is the smart or easy thing to do.

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This film was re-made with Sharron Stone in the lead in 1999, I have not seen this film so I don’t know how it compares.  This Gloria is not a perfect film, but is an interesting watch,  This is for fans of early independent films and those that like gritty 70’s neo-noir.

News: Luther is back!

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Production on a 2 part Luther special is coming to BBC!  It has started filming in London and will be on BBC in the fall, hopefully this means on BBC America as well.  Both Idris Elba and creator Neil Cross are involved.  Hopefully this doesn’t mean we are not getting the planned feature film, but it will obviously delay that.  If you have not seen this television series I highly recommend that you do.  There is also a book that is a prequel to the show, written by Neil Cross(I have not read the book yet, but look forward to doing so soon).  The book is what the basis of the movie will be.  Check out more details here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/luther-shoot

Re-watching the Classics: The Maltese Falcon

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The Maltese Falcon has a lot of firsts, firsts that would change film, film-noir, fiction and popular culture forever.  The Maltese Falcon is considered by some as the first true film-noir movie.  It is the first movie John Huston ever directed who went on to direct 46 more movies, many of them considered classics and he is considered one of the best directors in history.  This is Sydney Greenstreet’s first film, at 62 years old, he was a stage actor for 40 years before this film.  Greenstreet went on to make 24 more movies in his career, 9 more with co-star Peter Lorre.  This book on which it is based is written by Dashiell Hammett, who some consider the first writer of noir fiction, if he isn’t he certainly is one of the earliest influential writers and a master of the genre.  His work has not only influenced the noir genre greatly, but has popped up in western and samurai movies and films from all over the globe.  I read the book many years ago, and may re-read it and give it, its own review later.  I can tell you that the book is amazing as well.

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This movie has one glaring non-first, this is the third time this book has been adapted to the screen, the other two where rather lack luster attempts(I have not seen either of them).  The reason this one worked so well is John Huston wrote the script just as the book was written.  The previous attempts all had a happy ending, Huston left the original book ending in his version.

The Falcon itself may be the most famous MacGuffin in film history, it is definitely the most valuable.  There are 4 know Falcons and 2 are made of lead.  These lead versions have gone to auction and sold for well over a million dollars.  That is 3x what the original film cost to make.

We have a bunch of the common themes we will find in noir movies for the next 20 years to even today’s neo noir films.  We have the hardboiled private detective with the overcoat and fedora hat, has anybody done this better than Humphrey Bogart?  We have the femme fatale in Mary Astor.  We have an unhappy ending that maybe not what the audience wanted. We have twists and turns, sometimes us as a viewer are not sure what is going on, does our hero know what is going on?  Most of the film is from our hero’s prospective, we are learning as our hero learns. We also have some underling moral issues that are there but not spoken, do to the movie code of the time.  Is our hero having an affair with his partners wife?  Is one of our thugs actually a gay man?  Is our femme fatale using sex and lies to get what she wants?

Our story starts at Spade and Archer’s office.  Spade and Archer are partners and private detectives.  They take on a case where a man needs to be followed because he has taken our clients younger sister and will not let them see her.  When Archer is on the job, he is shot and killed.  This is where are hero Sam Spade takes over trying to find out who killed his partner and why.  Our adventure is with Spade, he is in every scene of this film, except the scene where his partner is murdered.  We don’t know who to believe and who to trust, just like Sam Spade.  If you haven’t seen The Maltese Falcon yet, do it right now!

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In film noir and noir fiction for that matter we have two writers, that are considered the best of the era.  Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.  The debt about who is best will live forever.  I’ve read both of them and can’t pick a winner myself.  I think the winner is us, as readers of this classic fiction.  One thing they have in common is Humphrey Bogart, the iconic star that played both Hammett’s Sam Spade and Chandler’s Marlowe.  Who is your favorite Bogie detective, Spade or Marlowe?

New Movie Coming Soon: Man from Reno

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Man from Reno is a film that has been going around the festival circuit and picking up some awards.  Was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards this year.  Looks like a promising film, can’t wait to see it.  Will be in select theaters on March 27th. Unfortunately, I doubt any of those theaters will be in my area.  I will be looking for it on DVD or PPV.

Review: Book Vs. Film: Cold in July

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Cold in July started out as a noir book written by Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale is a genre writer that writes everything from horror to sci-fi, and of course some noir. Cold in July was first published in 1989.

The screenplay is written by Nick Damici and Jim Mickle who also directs. This team has brought us a few low-budget horror movies including the very good Stake Land. They are also working on a television show based on Hap and Leonard, two characters also created by Lansdale and has 10 books in the series so far. This will hopefully start airing on the Sundance Channel next year.

The Film stars Dexter himself Michael C. Hall in a role just as dark, but a totally different type character.  He plays a family man who is married to a lovely wife played by Vinessa Shaw and has a small boy.  They have a home invader, who Hall kills in self-defense.  He then learns that the man he killed has a father who just got out of prison, played by Sam Shepard.  The Father comes to town for revenge on his son’s killer and all hell breaks loose!  This might be enough for a complete film, but it is only the start, the direction this goes is far from predictable.

Don Johnson steals the show as Jim Bob, a detective that bleeds Texas and is called in to help on the case.  He raises pigs, wears an outfit out of the old west and drives a big Cadillac.  We want more Jim Bob! and we might just get it.  Jim Bob is a character that also appears in the Hap and Leonard books, so we may see him in the television series at some point.

So what is better, the film or the book.  I read the book and then watched the movie twice, and I would have to say I would go with both. Nick Damici and Jim Mickle stay true to the source material, even having the film take place in the late 1980’s when it was written.  I actually think watching the movie first may be the way to go.  The story is so fresh and original that you will not see what is coming in the film, leaving you with more shock and awe then if you read the book first.  Then read the book as soon as you can get your hands on a copy.