Month: April 2015

Re-watching the Classics: The French Connection

bryancyr Movie, Neo-Noir , , , , , , , , , ,

French-Connection

The French Connection is a Best Picture winner, directed by William Friedkin who also won Best Director.  This is based on a book by Robin Moore about one of the biggest heroin busts in New York history. Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso are the two narcotics cops who in real life where the center of the investigation.  They both play small roles in the film.  The two cops are played by Gene Hackman as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Roy Scheider as Buddy Russo.  Fernando Rey plays our head French bad guy.

The film starts out with our two heroes working undercover, Popeye dressed as a Santa Claus, chase and bust a small time drug dealer.  He is questioned and talks about a huge shipment coming to New York soon.  They soon find themselves following Sal and Angie Boca (played by Tony Lo Bianco and Arlene Farber) who they believe is part of the huge shipment. We see our heroes using informants and help from the DEA to get to the bottom of the case.

This film has a couple of classic scenes, one is the infamous car chase that is considered one of the best ever.  Soon after this scene is one in which Popeye shoots a man in the back.  This scene was not liked by police officers of the time but was approved by Eddie Egan who was on the set.  When first viewed by audiences they loved the scene.  This ended up on the poster for the film.

the-french-connection-5

This film is often put in “Top 100 Movies of All Time” lists and is a classic by anybody’s standards.  I liked this film the first time I seen it 20 some years ago, and also liked it this time.  I don’t put this in my top 100 films of all time, but it is worth watching.  It is a must see for film fans of any kind, whether you are a neo-noir or crime movie fan or not.   This movie is followed by a sequel with Popeye Doyle going to France and also a spin-off with Roy Scheider playing a version of his character called The Seven-Ups.  I have not seen either of these yet.

Favorite Tidbit: The popular Popeye’s Chicken restaurant chain is named after Popeye Doyle.

Review: The Gambler and the Lady

bryancyr film-noir, Movie , , , , ,

2006967_original

The Gambler and the Lady is a film noir from 1952 by Hammer Studios in Britain.  Hammer is better known for making horror movies, but they did make quite a few noir films as well.  Dane Clark is an American actor who appeared in a few of these films.

2407.original

Sam Newfield wrote this film and directed part of it.  He was a prolific B movie director with 277 films to his credit.

We start with Clark fleeing from America for a fresh start in Britain.  He has a rags to riches story and soon owns a night club, a race horse, an illegal gambling game, and manages a boxer.  All gained on smart gambling moves, some not exactly legal.  He has one dream though, he wants to be part of the upper crust, rub elbows with the Dukes and Earls of England.  He is also currently dating the dancer from his night club, but that is on the rocks.  He also has to worry about a global illegal gambling gang moving in on his territory.  Clark also falls for the Lady Susan played by Naomi Chance one night in his night club.  All this crisscross into an interesting story that leaves our hero digging himself a deeper and deeper hole.

This is not a classic noir, but is very interesting and fun to watch for noir fans or fans of Dane Clark.

Review: Season 1 of Better Call Saul

bryancyr Neo-Noir, Television , , , , , , , ,

better-call-saul-trailer

Better Call Saul is a comedy, drama, neo noir mash-up that is pure gritty fun.  Season 1 has just ended on AMC and I really enjoyed it.  Bob Odenkirk plays our main protagonist, Jimmy McGill, he is a lawyer, con-man, overall good guy?  Not how to classify him.  One minute he is conning some innocent bystander and the next he is returning almost $2 million dollars in cash to its rightful owner.

Our next most interesting character is Mike Ehrmantraut played by Jonathan Banks and he is a bad ass.  He is our normal noir protagonist, you know, ex-cop with issues that wants to get out, but seems to always finding himself in the middle of the mess.

We also have Jimmy’s brother,Chuck, a fancy lawyer who got Jimmy out of trouble before. Chuck is played by Michael McKean.  Chuck has an interesting disease that keeps him basically as a recluse now.

These three characters all have one thing in common, they have all left where they came from because something horrible has happened and ended up in New Mexico to get a fresh start.  Unfortunately a new start just means new problems, with some of their past problems hunting them down to boot.

Rhea Seehorn plays good lawyer and is always looking out for Jimmy and Patrick Fabian plays bad lawyer, always out to get Jimmy for some reason.  We also have minor characters of interest who are too numerous to talk about here.

The first season is only 10 episodes long, and hey I wish more American television would do this.  A good series could be great if it wasn’t forced to use sub-par stories to fill a complete 24 episode season.  All 10 of these episodes are great and even though it is a short season we have a lot of story.  The story starts out with a great looking black and white scene looking very film noirish, of Jimmy after the events of Breaking Bad, we then flash back to 6 years before the events of Breaking Bad, and even have flashbacks from there to tell more back story.

I honestly never got through all of Breaking Bad yet, still need to watch the last few seasons.  I look forward to doing so, but the reason I bring this up is you don’t have to have seen Breaking Bad or even know much about that series to enjoy Better Call Saul.

Better Call Saul is for anybody looking for great television in a sea of reality t.v..  If you like dark comedy, good drama, crime stories, and especially us neo noir fans need to see Better Call Saul!

Review: Lured

bryancyr film-noir, Movie , , , , , ,

lured-movie-poster-1947-1020458551

Lured is a film noir from 1947 directed by Douglas Sirk.  This is based on the 1939 French film, Personal Column. This has two legendary stars, both not well-known for their noir films.  Lucille Ball known more for her comedy and Boris Karloff for his horror films.  Though Ball shows some humor in this and Karloff plays an insane artist that is scary at times this is not the norm for our stars.

Ball plays Sandra who is a dancer from New York that is stranded in London after the show she was in goes bust.  Her friend goes missing and she goes to Scotland Yard with a personal ad from the news paper that her friend answered shortly before her disappearance.  Charles Coburn plays an Inspector that recruits Ball to work undercover to find the “Poet Killer.”   Ball has many strange run ins answering personal ads trying to find the killer.  We have many suspects including Karloff.  Ball also falls for rich night club owner Robert Fleming played by George Sanders.  We have many red herrings and suspects to choose from and the audience doesn’t know who the serial killer is until near the end of the film.

I got to admit I’ve never been a big Lucille Ball fan. With this movie and The Dark Corner (which I hope to re-watch and review later) I really wish she would have done more films like this.  She was a very talented dramatic actress with enough charisma to hold her own on the big screen.  In this film she plays a beautiful dancer that everybody likes or loves, and you can see why.  Ball plays a witty and smart character as she ranges from being scared to death to falling in love and you totally buy it.

5712414326_4f0bc71463_b

If you can suspend your reality and get past Scotland Yard recruiting and hiring an American dancer to go undercover based on a 5 minute conversions you should enjoy this film.  If you are hesitating to watch this because you don’t see Ball or Karloff in noir, don’t be.  Very good movie worth a watch.

Review: Where the Truth Lies

bryancyr Movie, Neo-Noir , , , , , , ,

MV5BMTI2NzQ3ODc3OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjEzMTEzMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR1,0,214,317_AL_

Where the Truth Lies is a movie based on a book by Rupert Holmes.  Holmes is a bit of a talent, he writes mystery-thriller books like this one(I have not read any of his work), He has written plays and won Tony awards for doing so.  He’s produced music for the likes of Barbra Streisand.  He’s written songs for the likes of The Drifters and The Platters.  He wrote the short but well liked television sitcom Remember WENN.  Oh yeah and he’s written and sang his own material, you might know him for a little song Escape (The Pina Colada Song).  So he is a talented entertainer in a lot of ways, he has had success in every field of entertainment.  But can he write a great noir that translates to a great neo noir film?

The Canadian Director Atom Egoyan wrote this screenplay and directed it.  I really like his films and he has made a few really good neo-noir films in his career.

This cast is pretty amazing, especially looking at where some of them are 10 years later.  This film stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin type duo.  Firth has gone on to win an Oscar for The King’s Speech and has become quite the star.  We have two femme fatale’s in this movie, Maureen played by Rachel Blanchard, who has shown up on the very good Fargo television series. The second femme fatale is Karen played by Alison Lohman who has done some amazing work but seems to have gotten married in 2009 and has disappeared from the movies.  Anybody know why she hasn’t been in anything lately?

This film starts out with our showbiz duo doing a telethon but we realize something is a miss right away.  Our team has a love/hate relationship for sure.  We than find our first femme fatale Maureen in a hotel room tub full of ice and long dead.  We than flash forward to our second femme fatale Karen who is a journalist and is writing a book about our entertainment team with an emphasis on the incident of the dead girl.  We continue flashing back and forward as Karen tries to find out what really happened that fateful night to Maureen.  Is she to close to the story?  Will the same fate fall on her?  Will she find out how Maureen died and why?

Favorite Tidbit:  Egoyan made many cuts to this to get it an R rating instead of the NC-17 rating, he failed.  It was later learned that the cut of the film American audiences eventually saw was the same cut that premiered at Cannes.

I really enjoyed this film as I have most of Egoyan’s films.  If you like your neo-noir on the thriller, murder mystery side, you will like this film.  Give it a try if you have not seen it yet.

Book Review: Tussinland by Mike Monson

bryancyr Book, Noir , , ,

final-cover

Tussinland by Mike Monson is another great pulpy noir from the guys at All Due Respect books.  What a ride!  this book starts out with our main character Paul Dunn getting wasted on Robitussin, hence the title of the book.  Paul lives with his mother after loosing everything he had, job, wife, kids, house, all gone!  We soon find out that his wife and new boyfriend are slaughtered, each shot twice at close range with a shotgun.  Paul is soon the main suspect in the crime and he is off on a task to find out why his wife was murdered and why they are trying to frame him.

Paul is part of the most dysfunctional family I’ve ever come across in literature.  His mom is a beautiful women and knows it, she seduces men often and her family has grown OK with that, oh yeah she also likes her vodka.  His sister is married to a pastor of a new church, the church believes one thing, if you are a white male heterosexual who packs a gun you are a good christian.  Their daughter, Paul’s niece, is a smart girl, but has lost interest in school after meeting her boyfriend.  Her and her boyfriend like sex and drugs, and don’t mind filming the sex for others entertainment.  They hope to make a career in the adult industry.  Paul’s stepfather is the most sane of the bunch.  He left Paul’s mom and has found happiness with a much younger man who he has married.  And that is just the family!  We have an alcoholic cop and a pair of used car salesman that dabble in heroin distribution to throw in the mix.

Modesto California is the city where the author lives and the story takes place.  I’m also currently watching the television series American Crime which takes place in Modesto also.  Modesto sounds like a town that has been hit hard from the current recession.  Modesto, like all good noirs uses the city almost as a character in the story.  I found Modesto itself has as much to do with putting Paul into his current situation as the people around him.

This is a great book for anybody that wants a modern pulp noir to read.  You can get a copy at:

http://allduerespectbooks.com/

Also Mike Monson was the guy that was nice enough to send me some books from All Due Respect and has a great blog as well.  Check him out at:

http://mikemonson.org/

Review: Highway 301

bryancyr film-noir, Movie , , , , , ,

highway-301-movie-poster-1959-1010507595

What are we suppose to do?  Sit here like mummies?

Why don’t you do something about your face, that should keep you busy for a couple of hours.

This is a great couple lines of dialog from this B-movie from Warner Brothers.

This film is titled after the highway that ran through the three states of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.  This gave us the name Tri-State Gang for our group of bank robbers.

When I started watching this, we had the Governors of all three states talking to you about how crime doesn’t pay.  This gave me the impression this was going to be a docudrama type film like G-men, and it was to a certain degree. I felt G-men was a recruiting ad for the F.B.I. and  thought we where in for the same kind of thing here.  Instead it focuses on the criminal gang, and then goes to show you how crime does pay!  It’s like an instructional movie on how to rob a bank at the time and get away with it!  The way crime doesn’t pay in this movie, isn’t the police or F.B.I. catching you it’s your fellow bank robbers and the women who love them that trip them up.

The one thing about this film that kind of shocked me, is the violence this gang uses.  The killing of innocent people and murdering people with big mouths in broad daylight in front of witnesses was surprising to me.  The ending also seemed very violent for a film from 1950.

This film is written and directed by Andrew L. Stone who wrote and directed many film noir’s in his career.  George is our main baddie and is played wonderfully by Steve Cochran.  You hate him the whole movie!

cc04a8d97b7a4e50d313d159c3e58699

Gaby Andre plays our second female victim of George and is the only character we feel some sadness for.  Virginia Grey plays another of the girls in the gang who seems to be caught in a web of lies.  Our detective on the case narrates the story of our gang and how he finally caught them.  The detective is played by Edmon Ryan.

The story of this film shows the Tri-State Gang pull off a successful bank robbery and then a not so successful armored car robbery.  We soon meet the ladies that love the gang and one talks a little too much at a night club and things start to unravel for the gang.

This movie has flashes of brilliance and is a good little B-movie noir and worth a view for hardcore noir fans, and we learn “Don’t dance with strangers or talk to anyone with a mustache.”

63354669

Favorite Tidbit:  There looks to be a real Tri-State Gang in the 1930’s, not sure how much of the movie is based on fact, but it looks like 3 of the Gang where eventually sentenced to death.

Review: Cult Classic-The Town That Dreaded Sundown

bryancyr Horror, Movie, True Crime , , , ,

images

This 1976 movie The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a film about a serial killer that terrorized the town of Texarkana.  This is based on a true story and was a series of crimes that where never solved.  I can’t help but see many similarities between this case and movie to the case and movie of Zodiac.  I reviewed Zodiac here:

https://everythingnoir.com/2015/02/26/re-watching-zodiac/

This film is not the best acted, minus a few good performances from Ben Johnson and Andrew Prine.

This film has a cult following, usually among horror fans, and you can’t help but think this film may have been made to cash in on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre hype that came out 2 years before.  Though there is some terrifying scenes in this, the overall tone is more of a serial killer hunted by our main characters of detectives and a famous Texas Ranger.  There is also some comic moments, these didn’t really work for me and I feel took away from the movie.  Most of these comedic scenes come from the director himself, Charles B. Pierce that also plays the bumbling rookie “Spark plug.”

The story starts out with a couple out on lover’s lane who are attacked by a masked man.  Then a few weeks later a similar crime is committed, bringing the town to a panic.  They bring in a Texas Ranger to help with the case and our story continues from there.

Though the film is based on real events, it does take many liberties with the story.  None of the murders or crime scenes are very accurate, and the few close run ins between the law and the phantom killer never happened.  The number of crimes and basic time frame is fairly accurate.  To this day, the crimes have never been solved.

This has become a cult classic over the years and is looked at as one of the early slasher movies that would start a trend continued by Halloween and Friday the 13th.  It also was released on VHS back in the mid 80’s and was not put out on DVD until 2013, making it a hard film to find and watch.  This seemed to give it more cult status.

There is also a remake/sequel that was recently made and I have not seen it.  It looks like that film is more of a straight up horror movie.

The film is a slightly above average drive-in movie from the 70’s and is worth watching if you are a fan of slasher movies or of 70’s horror.  I think it will appeal to those who love true crime stories as well.  Though it does have some noir elements, like the voice over docudrama style and it takes place soon after World War II in the 1940’s, I don’t think hardcore film noir fans will like it, especially if they are expecting a traditional neo-noir.  Personally I felt it was more a cheap neo-noir then it is a horror movie and is something different to watch on a boring Sunday afternoon.

https://youtu.be/JOTOxk1naC4

Review: Whiplash

bryancyr film-noir, Movie , , , , , ,

whiplash

“I’m not exactly beautiful, but I am available.  I’m kind to my mother and I make very good spaghetti”.

“Sorry I don’t like spaghetti.”

That is a couple of lines of dialog in Whiplash, and there are a few more gems in this little known noir.

This is directed by Lewis Seiler who looks to have directed quite a few films throughout his career though this is the only one I’ve seen.

hqdefault

This movie starts out with our hero played by Dane Clark in a boxing bout in New York City and getting beat pretty handily.  He has an inner dialog with himself asking why is he here?  What is he doing?  He just wants to be back home in California on the beach.  In film noir fashion we flashback to a better time in California,with our hero painting a beach scene.  He soon finds out one of his paintings has been sold and he thinks the buyer has been ripped off.  Our hero doesn’t feel he has enough talent for his paintings to be sold.  He hunts down the buyer and soon falls in love with her.  Our buyer is also our femme fatale, Laurie, played by Alexis Smith.  They fall in love and all is great, until Laurie turns up missing and our hero’s only clue is the painting she bought of his is being sent to a doctor in New York City.  Our hero packs up and goes to New York to find his lost love.

images

When in New York we discover a plethora of new characters. Including Laurie’s husband, an ex-fighter who is now a promoter played by Zachary Scott.  An alcoholic doctor played by Jeffrey Lynn. We also get some comic relief from fellow artist played by Eve Arden (from Grease fame).

This film has some more of noir’s favorite sport, boxing, we have a love triangle between our hero, our femme fatale and a fallen hero doing anything he can to get back to the top.  This film has not been viewed a lot and maybe a little undervalued.  I found this film to be pretty good.  With only 200 votes on IMDb and a current rating of 6.4 it is a little underrated.

This film will be enjoyed by film noir fans and boxing fans alike.  Worth a viewing if you get a chance.