THE LOST SQUADRON

THE LOST SQUADRON (1932) is a two-fisted pre-Code Hollywood drama (produced by RKO)  that finds three pilots and their mechanic cast adrift in post WWI America.

 The men are Captain "Gibby" Gipson (Richard Dix), Lt. "Woody" Curwood (Robert Armstrong), "Red" (Joel McCrea) and Sgt. Fritz (Hugh Herbert). The men were aces in the war torn skies over France during the Great War but have a hard time returning to their normal lives. Gibby, who longs to be reunited with his lover, Follete Marsh (the luminous Mary Astor), finds her in the arms of another man. 

It's Woody that saves the day. He takes a job in Hollywood as a stunt flier for the maniacal independent film director Arthur von Furst (Erich von Stroheim). Gibby, Red and Fritz join Woody on the movie set and it's there that plot complications arise. 

The leading lady in von Furst's next film is none other than his now wife, Follete. The director becomes insanely jealous of Gibby and tries to sabotage his plane. But it's Woody who flies the crate to his death, prompting Gibby and Red to mete out their own justice upon von Furst. They do so but there is now blood on their hands and one of the remaining pilots must atone for their sins. Since Red is engaged to be married to Woody's kid sister, The Pest (Dorothy Jordan), it's up to Gibby, a tragic hero if there ever was one, to pay the price. 

THE LOST SQUADRON is a grim, no-nonsense drama full of exciting aerial combat, well staged "fake" combat for the cameras, lovely young ladies, a hissable villain and three square jawed heroes. It reflects the rougher subject matter and thematic concerns found in many pre-Code Hollywood films. It's no WINGS (1927), but it's an extremely well made film that is worth seeing.

Highly recommended. 

THE PURPLE GANG

"...the whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang..."

Yeah, I know, I've never heard of this one either. But I did watch it the other day (courtesy of TCM) and I'm here to fill you in on this obscure crime film.

THE PURPLE GANG (1960) is an unmitigated UNTOUCHABLES wanna-be with a stentorian voice-over narration, a period setting (Detroit during Prohibition), and criminal exploits based on real people and incidents. It's a low budget, cheaply produced film that is padded out with numerous montage sequences that feature actual archival stock footage and scenes that look like they were liberally "borrowed" from other crime films. 

Barry (PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES) Sullivan stars as square jawed police detective Bill Harley. He's up against the notorious Purple Gang, a motley crew of juvenile delinquents headed by an over the top Robert Blake as "Honeyboy". The Purple Gang start out as small time thugs but quickly muscle in on a booze smuggling ring demanding protection money. The hoods are soon in control of a major crime organization that expands its' scope into all sorts of illegal operations. Naturally, this attracts the attention of rival mobs. A crew from St. Louis attempts to take over, a threat which the Purples quickly eliminate. But when the Mafia comes to town, an all out gang war erupts. 

Women do not fare well in this film. We're introduced to a dedicated social worker, Joan MacNamara (Jody Lawrence), early in the film. She truly believes she can help the troubled youths who are terrorizing the citizens of Detroit. The Purples rape and murder her. Gladys (Elaine Edwards), detective Harley's pregnant wife, is menaced by the gang in her own home, an act that leads to her death. And Daisy (Suzanne Ridgway), who confesses to every murder in the city to the police, is killed when she really does witness a slaying. 

THE PURPLE GANG is not a bad little film at all. It's an interesting vehicle for Robert Blake and director Frank McDonald keeps the action moving at a brisk pace. It's no classic but you could do a lot worse. 

RADIO DAYS

"He deserves an enema" 

RADIO DAYS (1987) is Woody Allen's valentine to the Golden Age of American radio. This is an era, having been born in 1956, that  I know about only through books and recordings. But Allen grew up in the late 1930s and early '40s and brilliantly captures the look and sounds of a lost day and time. 

Allen plays Joe, the adult narrator of this sweet exercise in nostalgia while Seth Greene portrays Joe onscreen as a youth. Joe lives in Rockaway Beach with his large, extended family, all of whom are regular radio listeners, each one enjoying his or her favorite program. Young Joe is enamored of the MASKED AVENGER show, only to learn years later that the square jawed hero of the adventure program was played by a short, bald actor (Wallace Shawn). 

Joe's family is portrayed as a working class Jewish clan who bicker and fight amongst themselves but are ultimately a tightly bound family unit who truly love each other. Their lives of unrequited love and dreams yet to be achieved are contrasted with the glamour and style of the celebrities that are heard on the radio shows, swells in the studio by day, and later, part of the see and be seen crowds at  impossibly stylized night clubs. Radio, as Allen presents it here, is truly the stuff that dreams are made of, whether for young Joe or ditzy cigarette girl Sally (Mia Farrow), who dreams of becoming a radio star, an ambition that she finally realizes through a colorful series of events.

Allen uses such now legendary radio touchstones as Orson Welles's  WAR OF THE WORLDS 1939 Halloween broadcast and the sudden news bulletin of the attack on Pearl Harbor ("Who's Pearl Harbor?" Sally wants to know), to build comic scenarios around. Joe and his young friends spy upon a naked woman in her apartment, later to discover she's their substitute teacher ("We are all, without a doubt, going straight to hell"), and muse about their favorite female movie stars. One lad favors Rita Hayworth, another Betty Grable while a third has the hots for Dana Andrews ("Dana Andrews is a boy? With a name like Dana?")

The cast is excellent. Allen uses a lot of his regular players to great advantage, often in just bit parts and cameo appearances. The cast includes Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Larry Davis, Julie Kavner, Diane Keaton, Kenneth Mars, Josh Mostlel, Don Pardo, Tony Roberts, Michael Tucker, and Dianne Wiest. 

The art direction by Santo Loquasto received a well deserved Academy Award nomination. His brilliant recreation of New York and surrounding environs is spot on. Carlos Di Palma (another regular Allen collaborator), gives his cinematography a slightly golden hue when depicting the fabulous night clubs and Radio City Music Hall ("It was like entering Heaven") while Joe's home is shot with a subdued color palette. 

But it's the music that is the real star of RADIO DAYS. Tons of great, big band songs are heard throughout the film and provide touchstones and memory markers for many of the characters. Like Joe says, whenever he hears "Marzy Doats" he can't help but remember the time his neighbor had a nervous breakdown and ran out into the street in his underclothes brandishing a butcher axe. 

 Joe admits that he can't help but romanticize the past but that's no crime.

 

We all do. 

And Woody Allen does so beautifully in RADIO DAYS. 

Highest recommendation. 

BLACK ALIBI

Cornell Woolrich's BLACK ALIBI (1942), is a master class in the art of the psychological suspense novel. Set in Ciudad Real (the third largest city in South America), ALIBI finds a black leopard, originally intended as part of a publicity stunt, escaped and on the loose in the dark passageways of the ancient city. 

No sooner does the giant beast escape than deaths start occurring, all of which are attributed to the cat. But something about the killings (all of the victims are beautiful young women alone on the streets after dark) just doesn't add up. Manning, the publicity agent who cooked up the leopard stunt in the first place, suspects a human hand and mind behind the killings while police chief  Robles is 100% sure that the leopard is the killer. 

To prove his theory, Manning sets a trap using a beautiful young woman as bait. The trap is sprung however, and the young woman is whisked away into the night, leading Manning on a frantic race against time that climaxes in an ancient underground torture chamber in a sequence dripping with pure pulp horror. 

Woolrich presents each killing as an entire chapter, taking the time to develop the character of the victim and the locale and atmosphere of the city. He slowly ratchets up the suspense to an almost unbearable degree before finally releasing the tension. 

The first killing is that of a young girl, sent by her mother to a late night market to buy food. The girl is followed back to her home by something which attacks her just outside of the family's front door. It's a brilliant sequence, punctuated by wild screams of terror, the sound of something immense hitting the door and capped off by a slow trickle of blood under the threshold.

The next victim is trapped in a gated and locked cemetery after dark. The girl here has come to meet her lover but finds unbearable terror lurking in the darkness. Clo Clo, a "B" girl and semi prostitute is the next victim, followed by an American tourist who is savaged alongside a pastoral lake on the outskirts of the city. 

To say anything more about the ending of BLACK ALIBI would ruin the final narrative twist that Woolrich employs to tie everything up. No spoilers here, except to say that it's a shocker.

Shortly after publication, BLACK ALIBI was sold to RKO and producer Val Lewton's low budget horror film unit. The novel was filmed under the title of THE LEOPARD MAN in 1943. The setting was changed from South America to a small village in New Mexico but director Jacques Tourenur effectively uses the scene of the blood under the door to establish the mood and atmosphere early on in the film. It's a fine film, one that's well worth your time but if you want the real, unadulterated original thriller, you must read BLACK ALIBI.

Highest recommendation.

FRIGHT

FRIGHT (1950) is the first book I've read by the legendary Cornell Woolrich. It won't be the last. In fact, as soon as I finished FRIGHT last night, I started reading BLACK ALIBI (1942 and the basis for the classic 1943 horror film THE LEOPARD MAN). So far, so good. I'll post a review when I finish it. 

But for now, FRIGHT.

 Wow. 

This book is permeated with a palpable sense of paranoia in every paragraph. Every page is soaked with doom. Bleak House may have been a novel by Charles Dickens but it's where Woolrich's characters live their lives of impending annihilation. 

FRIGHT is set in the New York City of 1915, an odd choice for a noir novel, but Woolrich makes the time period work to his advantage. Young Prescott Marshall, a successful Wall Street broker is scheduled to marry the love of his life, the incandescently beautiful Marjorie Worth. But a drunken night on the town finds Prescott saddled with a blackmailing vixen who will stop at nothing to bleed the young man dry. In a furious fit of anger, Prescott murders the woman, just hours before his wedding ceremony. 

Prescott and his bride immediately move from New York to a never-named city somewhere in the heartland. Prescott gets a job at less pay than he made in New York and things are going okay until a strange man shows up in Prescott's office. Prescott is convinced that the man is a detective from New York who is following Prescott's trail. Prescott's paranoia leads him to commit two murders before he and Marjorie return to New York where more lives are ended. 

Just when you think this is the bleakest, most depressing ending to a story you've ever read, Woolrich pulls his trump card from up his sleeve by delivering a sucker punch, never-saw-it-coming epilogue that pulls the rug out from everything. 

To say any thing more about the twists and turns that this brilliant novel takes would spoil the delight of discovering them for yourself. No spoilers here.

Read FRIGHT and prepare to be plunged into a nightmare world in which one bad deed leads to another, and another, and another. 

Highest recommendation. 

THE TAKE

Years before he played Lando Calrissian and Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent, Billy Dee Williams headlined the mediocre and morally ambiguous crime film, THE TAKE (1974) .

Looking for all of the world like a made-for-television movie with a TV-centric cast to boot, THE TAKE is the story of San Francisco police detective Lt. Sneed, who is sent to Paloma, New Mexico to help take on the burgeoning organized crime ring (hereafter referred to as "The Syndicate") muscling in on the city. Sneed arrives in town just in time to take part in a courthouse shoot-out that leaves several dead, including three cops. Sneed is under the command of harried police chief Berrigan (Eddie Albert). Another cop, Captain Dolek (Albert Salmi) sticks close to Sneed and with good reason. 

Come to find out that Sneed and Dolek are bent cops, with both of them on the payroll of mob boss Victor Manso (Vic Morrow). Sneed plays both ends against the middle as he continues to take money from Manso (money which he launders through real estate developer Oscar (Sorrell Booke)) while heading up a strike force to bring down Manso's drug and counterfeiting operations. 

The best cover for a crooked cop is to be a good cop is Sneed's philosophy and he not only succeeds at this but he gets away with it. That's right, a crooked cop is the hero of this run-of-the-mill crime film. Sneed not only pockets the cash at the end of the film, he's promoted to captain for his troubles. 

I don't know if director Robert Hartford-Davis and screenwriters Franklin Coen and Del Reisman wanted to make some kind of a "statement" film about how corrupt many American police departments were in the mid '70s or if they wanted to try to cash in on the DIRTY HARRY phenomenon by having a cop who breaks all of the rules but is, in the end, the only man who can do the job. 

Either way, THE TAKE is a lackluster effort from all involved. A couple of decent action scenes and beautiful New Mexico locations can't save this one. 

Thumbs down.

THIS GUN FOR HIRE

Alan Ladd, who had already appeared in bit parts in several films (including CITIZEN KANE (1941)), became a bonafide movie star with his role as hired killer Raven in THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942). Although short and skinny, Ladd brought a simmering intensity to this and many other roles that followed. Although best known for the immortal SHANE (1953), Ladd starred in several classic film noirs including THE GLASS KEY (1942), THE BLUE DAHLIA (1946), APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER (1951) and HELL ON FRISCO BAY (1955).

In GUN, Ladd was teamed for the first time with Paramount studios' "It" girl of the 1940s, blond bombshell Veronica Lake. Ladd and Lake strike genuine sparks in GUN and they worked together in several subsequent films including THE GLASS KEY, THE BLUE DAHLIA and SAIGON (1948). 

Based on a novel by Graham Greene, THIS GUN FOR HIRE opens with contract killer Raven (who has a soft spot for cats), gunning down not one, but two people. Can't leave any witnesses, you know. He's paid off by slimy Willard Gates ( Laird Cregar), in marked money, which means that as soon as Raven tries to spend any of the bills, he'll be spotted. 

Raven goes on the run to track down Gates who works two jobs. By day, he's an executive with Nitro Chemical Corporation in Los Angeles while by night, he's the impresario of The Neptune Club. He's hired Ellen Graham (Lake), a sexy, singing, sleight of hand magician for his nightclub. Ellen, it turns out, is the girlfriend of police detective Michael Crane (Robert Preston) who is on Raven's trail. And she's also been asked by a U.S. Senator to find out the inner workings of Gates and his boss, Alvin Brewster (Tullly Marshall), both of whom are planning to sell a formula for poison gas to the Japanese. 

All of these various plot threads eventually weave together with Ellen, first taken hostage by Raven, then rescued by him and ultimately aiding him in his quest for revenge. There's a well staged action set piece in a Los Angeles rail yard before the climax in the headquarters of Nitro Chemical. 

Part film noir, part wartime spy thriller, THIS GUN FOR HIRE is a first rate film all the way. Ladd and Lake are both top notch but it's Laird Cregar who steals the show. Creger, who died incredibly young at the age of 31 in 1944, comes across as the illegitimate love child of Sidney Greenstreet and Raymond Burr with Charles Laughton serving as the midwife. The rotund, oleaginous actor oozes plummy menace in every scene he's in. Cregar was a standout in other film noirs: I WAKE UP SCREAMING (1941), THE LODGER (1944) and HANGOVER SQUARE (1945).

With a screenplay by  Albert Maltz and the legendary W.R. Burnett and ace direction by Frank Tuttle, THIS GUN FOR HIRE is a winner. 

Recommended. 

THE ANDERSON TAPES

Based on the bestselling novel by thriller writer Lawrence Sanders, Sidney Lumet's THE ANDERSON TAPES (1971), is a slick-as-a-whistle, first rate, New York City set crime film, a viable sub-genre of films that dominated the cinematic landscape of the 1970s. 

Sean Connery, anxious to avoid typecasting and shed his image as British super spy James Bond, stars as veteran criminal Duke Anderson. Freshly released from prison, Duke is already busy plotting his next caper and it's a doozy. He plans to rob all of the units of a swank New York City apartment building, a structure in which his girlfriend Ingrid (the smoking hot Dyan Cannon), resides as a kept woman. 

Of course, Anderson will need a team to execute the heist. He recruits Tommy Haskins, a gay antiques dealer (Martin Balsam in a terrific against-type performance), young ex-con The Kid (Christopher Walken in his first film role, and getaway driver Edward Spencer (Dick Anthony Williams). For old times sake, Anderson includes Pop (Stan Gottlieb), another ex-con, as lookout. 

But Anderson's caper is financed by mob boss Pat Angelo (Alan King, in another bit of offbeat casting) who insists that Anderson include loose cannon muscle man Socks Parelli (Val Avery), a goon that Anderson has orders to kill during the robbery. 

The second half of the film follows the crime itself but at various points in the narrative, Lumet flashes forward to the aftermath of the robbery, feeding us bits and pieces of information from the point of view of various robbery victims and making us wonder, who the guy on the stretcher (seen in numerous scenes) is. 

The police get wind of the robbery while it's in progress and launch a SWAT team assault on the building. The commander of the SWAT team is Captain Delaney (Ralph Meeker, playing his part broadly and for laughs) and a very young Garret Morris as patrolman Everson. 

Throughout the film, Lumet shows us various police and federal agencies that have all of the various players in the drama under constant surveillance through cameras, microphones and wire taps. Despite this constant monitoring by Big Brother, all of the data the various agencies have collected through the course of the film is ultimately worthless because it was all gained illegally. 

Filmed entirely on location in New York City and with a jazzy/electronic score by the great Quincy James, THE ANDERSON TAPES is a masterfully executed work by one of the greatest American filmmakers of the latter half of the twentieth century. 

Highly recommended. 

A TOUCH OF DEATH

First published in 1953, A TOUCH OF DEATH by Charles Williams was one of the early entries in the line of Hard Case Crime reprints of vintage crime fiction . It's a white knuckle descent into hell that asks the question, just what you be willing to do for $120,000 (a sizable amount in 1953). 

For one Lee Scarborough, the answer is anything. Scarborough is the classic noir trope, the average, decent guy who plays the fly trapped in a web spun by a deadly black widow in the form of Madelon Butler, as fatale a femme as I've ever encountered in all my years of reading crime fiction. 

Scarborough is tasked with breaking into a supposedly empty house in search of the aforementioned money. Seems Madelon's husband embezzled the money from the bank where he worked. But now Mr. Butler is dead and the money is missing. But Scarborough finds the house isn't empty when he discovers an extremely drunk Madelon in a bedroom. Knowing that she holds the key (literally) to the location of the money, Scarborough takes the unconscious woman from the home and goes on the run. 

The pair hole up at a deserted cabin where they are soon found out by a murderous brother and sister duo who are also after the money. Scarborough and Madelon return to the house where Madelon commits a murder before setting a torch to the ancient structure. 

Lee and Madelon flee once again and take refuge in his apartment where a deadly mental game of cat and mouse plays out. Every time Lee thinks he has an answer to their predicament (cops everywhere are hunting for them), he finds out that the ice cold Madelon is already at least one, sometimes two steps ahead of him. 

And when Lee launches his final plan to recover the money from three different safety deposit boxes, he discovers that Madelon has one last twist of the knife to deliver.

A TOUCH OF DEATH moves at a shot-from-a-cannon pace as the likeable patsy Lee finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a swirling nightmare of a situation from which only one of them can escape. 

This is the first book by Charles Williams that I've read but rest assured it won't be the last. 

Highest recommendation.

BLACK GUNN

Regular readers of this blog (and I sincerely hope you're one of them), know of my fondness for the "blaxploitation" films of the 1970s. These vintage genre films (almost all of them crime/action thrillers) take me back to my high school years and I genuinely dig the action, clothes, cars and music that's found in these films. Tough guy heroes, beautiful women, vicious bad guys and lapels out to here. Gotta love 'em!  Guilty pleasure? You betcha but I'm not going to apologize to anyone for liking these films. 

Kudos to TCM which often runs "blaxploitation" films in their late Saturday night/early Sunday morning time slots dubbed "TCM Underground". That's where I recently caught BLACK GUNN (1972), a Jim Brown vehicle that I had never seen before. 

The film kicks off with an explosive blast, a heist at gunpoint by a group of masked robbers against the money room of a mob controlled gambling den. The crooks get and get away with cash and a set of ledgers that threaten to blow the lid off of organized crime in Los Angeles.

Turns out the robbers are the leaders of the Black Action Group (B.A.G.), a para-military group similar to the Black Panthers. B.A.G. is made up of Vietnam vets and ex-cons and the money is going to buy weapons for an armed uprising against The MAN. 

One of the members of the gang, Scott (Herbert Jefferson Jr.), deposits the ledgers in a safe inside of his brother's night club. His brother? Gunn (Jim Brown). When Scott is killed by the mob, Gunn seeks revenge by launching a one-man war against the gangsters. 

The gangsters are led by used car salesman Capelli (Martin Landau) who is aided by a couple of vicious thugs, Rico (William Campbell) and Ray Kriley (Bruce Glover, who always played great psychos). There's also the luscious, mob connected Toni (Luciana Paluzzi, one of the Bond girls in THUNDERBALL) and Gary (I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN) Conway as a crooked politician. 

BLACK GUNN is a fairly routine crime/action film but director Robert Hartford-Davis keeps things moving at a good clip and stages several effective action set pieces, including the climatic dockside gun battle/car chase which ends with lots of things blowing up real good. 

BLACK GUNN made for a pleasant diversion on a cold, rainy November afternoon. Definitely recommended to fans of "blaxploitation" films or for those curious about the genre. 

FIRES THAT DESTROY

FIRES THAT DESTROY (1951) is the third Harry Whittington crime novel I've read in as many weeks. The other two, FORGIVE ME, KILLER and THE DEVIL WEARS WINGS, were both top notch noir drenched thrillers, and FIRES THAT DESTROY is yet another first rate depiction of a long, slow descent into hell.

Homely Bernice Harper murders Lloyd Deerman, her blind boss, at the beginning of the book. He's in love with her but she wants nothing to do with Lloyd. All she wants is the twenty-some-odd thousand dollars in cold cash that Lloyd had hidden in a hollowed out accounts ledger. When Bernice is cleared of suspicion in Deerman's death she takes the money and runs. She cashes a hundred dollar bill at a local bank and catches the eye of handsome young teller, Carlos Brandon. She can't imagine what he sees in her but he's incredibly charming and seems to be genuinely attracted to her.

Before you know it, they've fallen in love and Bernice has undergone a complete fashion, hair and makeup transformation at a posh New York salon, emerging as a stunning beauty. She and Carlos decide to run away to Florida and get married. They do so but it's not long before the trouble starts.

Bernice is overwhelmed with passion and desire for her handsome new husband. She literally can't keep her hands off of him as years of repressed urges come boiling to the surface. She wants sex 24/7. Carlos tries his best to satisfy her but he is, unfortunately, impotent. Thus begins a fevered love/hate relationship between the newlyweds. 

A bad situation only gets worse (and of course, this being a hard boiled noir drama, things must get worse) when Bernice learns that Carlos has had a string of rich women whom he has sponged off of in order to cover his massive gambling debts. 

Bernice, left alone while Carlos romances a hot-to-trot young waitress, turns to drinking heavily to alleviate her pain and anguish. She begins to contemplate suicide and a helpful bartender sells her a deadly concoction guaranteed to end things quickly. All she has to do is drink it. 

There's a sucker punch twist in the final pages of the book, an event that finalizes Bernice's final and irrevocable descent into the very depths of hell. 

All three of the Whittington books that I've read feature protagonists who start off in a very bad place only to find themselves falling deeper and farther into total damnation. FIRES is a first class piece of crime fiction, a searing character study of a woman who would kill to be loved and admired. She wants nothing more than to be treated as all other beautiful women are treated. 

In the end, she gets just what she wants.

Highly recommended. 

FORGIVE ME, KILLER

FORGIVE ME, KILLER (1956) is the first crime novel I've read by Harry Whittington. It won't be the last.

Whittington carved out a solid and respectable career as a writer of paperback originals in the 1950s and '60s. He wrote countless westerns, mysteries, romances, "back woods" yarns and many, many more. In the '60s, he wrote one of the original novels in THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. series published by Ace. Whittington could do it all and he did it all extremely well. 

Case in point, FORGIVE ME, KILLER. Bent vice cop Mike Ballard is on the take and as crooked as they come. He entertains a plea from Earl Walker,  a man on death row for the murder of  a B girl. Walker swears he's innocent but Ballard doesn't give a damn. As far as he's concerned, the case is closed. 

But when Ballard meets Peggy, Walker's demure, subdued wife, he changes his mind. He sees the hunger in her soul, her burning desire for a real relationship with a man who truly loves her. Ballard decides he wants Peggy more than anything and sets out to clear her husband.

But there are powerful operators in the underworld who don't want the case reopened. Ballard butts heads with police officials and a vicious crime boss before things come to an explosive conclusion. Walker is ultimately cleared but where does that leave Ballard and Peggy? In his last, desperate bid for atonement and redemption, Ballard makes a difficult choice.

Whittington packs a solid punch in the novel's lean 123 pages. It's hard to root for Ballard at any time during the course of the novel. He's not a nice guy and although he's trying to do the right thing, his ulterior motives call all of his actions into question. 

Tough, brutal and uncompromising, FORGIVE ME, KILLER is a first rate piece of hard-boiled crime fiction. 

Thumbs up.

RIFIFI

Shot on location in Paris on a very low budget, RIFIFI (1955) ranks as one of the greatest caper/heist films ever made. When American director Jules Dassin was blacklisted in the 1950s, he went to France to make movies. His first production was RIFIFI, a wire taut masterpiece of French film noir. 

RIFIFI follows all of the tropes of the caper/heist film. A ex-con plans a major score, the robbery of a Parisian jewelry store. He recruits a team of three men to assist him. His plan is elaborate, ingenious and meticulously executed. The men get and getaway with a fortune in diamonds and other jewels but, as they must, things go wrong in the third act when a murderous gangster and his men decide to steal the ice for themselves. The result is a high body count and an utterly bleak ending. 

Any and all of these elements would make RIFIFI worth watching. But Dassin ups the ante to 11 by filming a thirty-minute robbery sequence with no dialogue or musical score. The result is an incredibly suspenseful sequence that serves as a textbook exercise in pure cinema. It's brilliant, audacious and unforgettable. Director John Sturges did much the same thing with his cross cutting between escape sequences (all without dialogue) during the thrilling third act of THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has no dialogue for more than twenty-minutes at the beginning of the film.

Dassin made a string of first rate noirs in the United States beginning with 1947's BRUTE FORCE (for my money the best escape from prison movie ever made, so take that SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), THE NAKED CITY (1948), THIEVES' HIGHWAY (1949), and NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950). In 1964, Dassin made TOPKAPI, another first rate caper film. 

Brilliantly conceived and executed, RIFIFI stands as an incredibly influential work in the history of crime films, both American and foreign. Imitated and homaged but never equaled or surpassed, RIFIFI towers over the genre. 

Highly recommenced. 

THE KILLING

Believe it or not, I've never seen Stanley Kubrick's 1956 film noir masterpiece THE KILLING. It's one of those films that I've heard nothing but good things about but somehow, I've managed to miss it for all of these years. The film stars noir icons Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Timothy Carey. It's part of the Criterion Collection and I just might have to treat myself to a Blu Ray copy sometime in the near future. 

Until then, I'll have to make do with the source material. I've had a copy of the Black Lizard paperback edition of THE KILLING on my shelf for years. I ran across it the other day and decided to give it a try. Lionel White's 1955 novel, originally published under the title CLEAN BREAK is an astonishingly accomplished caper novel that moves faster than a thoroughbred coming into the home stretch. 

Ex con Johnny Clay is the mastermind behind a brilliant and daring race track robbery. He assembles a team of non-professionals to aid in his scheme. The group includes a bent cop, a track cashier, a bartender and a policy writer. The plan is foolproof but, as always, things go wrong. 

A mobster gets wind of the job through one of the gang member's cheating tramp of a wife and decides to go after Johnny and his men after they've executed the heist. There's a violent showdown at the end of the book between the two gangs and a stinger of an ending on the last page. 

White tells his story using multiple points of view, getting inside the heads of various characters. And he brilliantly fractures space and time in the last third of the novel, bouncing back and forth in time as various events play out at the race track. 

Lean, tough, swift and brutal, THE KILLING is exactly the kind of crime novel I dig. Loved this book! Can't wait to see the movie.

COFFY

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a big fan of "blaxploitation films", the sub-genre of exploitation cinema that flourished during the 1970s. While I haven't seen every blaxploitation film made during that era, I've thoroughly enjoyed the films I have seen. These movies take me back to my high school years with vintage cars, clothes, music, really bad guys, beautiful women and tons of "R" rated violence. These films were staples on both the inner city grindhouse circuit as well as the suburban drive-ins that were still in operation. 

COFFY (1973), which I watched for the first time yesterday, shows exploitation auteur Jack Hill at the top of his game in this violent actioner about a woman out to get revenge. Coffy (Pam Grier), is a nurse at a major metropolitan hospital (the city is never actually named but it's clear it's Los Angeles), whose little sister has become a heroin addict. The girl is in a rehab clinic but the prognosis for recovery doesn't look good. Coffy decides to seek out and kill all of the men responsible for her sister's condition. 

And that's just what she does. Coffy is not a police officer, a military veteran or a government agent of any sort. She's a fiercely determined and driven young woman who will stop at nothing to get the evil men who have hurt her sister. 

Coffy enters a sleazily underworld of pimps, prostitutes, drugs, mob hit men (including the great Sid Haig), crooked cops and corrupt politicians. The bad guys try to stop her several times using a variety of methods of mayhem but Coffy keeps on fighting. Hand guns, shotguns, sharpened hair pins, razor blades and various vehicles are all instruments of massive carnage throughout the film. At the end, all of the bad men have been dispatched, even a man Coffy loved.

 Nothing trumps revenge. 

Pam Grier, who had previously appeared in Hill's women-in-prison picture THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971), owns this movie from start to finish. With little formal acting training or experience (she was a receptionist at American International Pictures when Hill spotted her and cast her), Grier exudes star power in every frame. She's a beautiful, smart and competent young woman, no shrinking damsel in distress who must be rescued by a more capable man. She kicks ass and takes names and in the process, became an icon of 1970s blaxploitation cinema. Coffy as a character and Grier as an actress, both became positive role models for independent, strong women in a genre and industry dominated by men. Sure it's a low budget B movie but COFFY is nonetheless an important film from the break-all-the-rules cinema of the 1970s. 

Highly recommended. 

BITTER VICTORY

American director Nicholas Ray would, at first glance, seem to be a rather curious choice to helm a World War II action film. Better known for such classics as THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1949), IN A LONELY PLACE (1950), ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952), MACAO (1952), REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) and BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956), Ray did have one war movie, FLYING LEATHERNECKS (1951) under his belt. And a Nicholas Ray directed war movie is bound to be something different from the usual run of the mill fare. 

BITTER VICTORY (1957)  is the story of two men, Major David Brand (Curt Jurgens) and Captain Jim Leith (Richard Burton) who clash in North Africa during WWII. As it turns out, Leith, a combat veteran, had a brief but torrid affair with Jane (Ruth Roman), before she married Brand. Leith still carries a torch for Jane and she is still romantically attracted to the dashing young soldier. 

The British high command orders a commando raid on Benghazi to capture Nazi documents stored there. It's a dangerous mission but Brand, with no field experience, is given command of the operation due to his seniority and rank. Leith is assigned his second in command. The rest of the squad is composed of veteran British actors including Nigel Green and Christopher Lee. 

Ray wastes no time in getting the men to their objective where Brand freezes under stress, unable to kill a German sentry. It's up to Leith to do the dirty work and the operation continues. The men get the documents as ordered and put their escape plan into action. But the camels that were supposed to carry the men back to the rendezvous point don't show up, forcing the men to set off across the North African desert on foot. 

They're ambushed by a Nazi patrol and a vicious gun battle leaves most of the Germans dead except for Colonel Lutze (Fred Matter), whom the commandos take prisoner. Brand is clearly in over his head and he depends upon Leith to make the hard decisions. But when Brand sees a scorpion about to attack Leith, he does nothing to interfere, letting the man be stung, becoming unable to continue the journey. When a fierce sand storm erupts, it's Leith that saves Brand from certain death, dying in the process. The rest of his men believe Brand killed Leith and view him with suspicion for the rest of the trek.

The men finally meet up with British forces but while celebrating, they ignore Colonel Lutze who puts the bags containing the documents to the torch. Only one bag is able to be salvaged but it's enough for Brand to be recognized as a hero by the British top brass and awarded a medal for heroism under fire, a medal he most certainly doesn't deserve.

BITTER VICTORY is an interesting, offbeat and first rate little war movie that is unflinching it depicting some rather atrocious war crimes (on both sides). Burton and Jurgens seem to genuinely hate each other while Roman harbors deep feelings for both men. Cynical and uncompromising, BITTER VICTORY is well worth seeing for fans of Nicholas Ray and World War II films. 

Recommended. 

GRACE

Somewhere between Roman Polanski's masterpiece of urban horror, ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and the over-the-top insanity of Larry Cohen's monster baby epic IT'S ALIVE (1974) lies GRACE (2009). This low budget, independent Canadian horror film borrows a great deal from the body horror oeuvre of fellow Canadian David Cronenberg in it's depiction of motherhood gone horribly wrong. 

Madeline (Jordan Ladd),  is a pregnant young woman whose husband, Michael (Stephen Park), dies in a car accident before the baby is born. The accident also leave the baby dead but Madeline decides to let the corpse go full term and be delivered anyway, telling everyone that the infant died at birth. But somehow, the baby girl named Grace, comes alive after delivery. Is it a miracle? Or something far more sinister. 

It's the sinister option, of course, with young Grace refusing to accept breast milk in lieu of something else: blood. And not just any blood as Madeline finds out when she tries to feed Grace blood drained from fresh cuts of meat. No, little Grace demands human blood and she ravenously takes it from her anemic mother. Madeline is soon forced to find a supply of human blood that doesn't involve the ravaging her nipples and breasts. She finds that source in the form of a meddling Dr. Sohn (Malcolm Stewart) and Vivian (Gabrielle Rose), her grief stricken mother-in-law. But by then it's too late as Madeline herself has succumbed to the curse of needing human blood herself. And things ratchet up another notch in the last scene of the film when young Grace starts teething, implying a need for both blood and flesh. 

GRACE is a very well made little shocker which touches on some extremely disturbing themes and many "really-wish-I-hadn't-seen-that" scenes of shockingly intimate blood and gore. Not for the faint of heart, GRACE is a slowly building exercise in maternal terror and dread with no explanation given for why this living dead baby has come to be. She simply is and Madeline will do anything to protect and provide for her. 

This film is certainly not every one's cup of tea but for fans of modern, independent horror films, GRACE is definitely worth seeing. 

WHITE ZOMBIE

Universal wasn't the only Hollywood studio producing horror films in the 1930s. Paramount gave us ISLAND OF LOST SOULS in 1932, while Warner Brothers, known primarily for their hard boiled gangster dramas, released THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM in 1933 (and in early two-strip Technicolor). 

Although released by United Artists, WHITE ZOMBIE (1932) was actually an independent film produced and directed by Victor and Edward Halperin (respectively). Without a major studio pedigree, WHITE ZOMBIE sort of got lost in the pre-code horror film shuffle, despite a terrific starring turn by genre icon Bela Lugosi. Following his star making appearance in Tod Browning's DRACULA (1931), Lugosi was featured in another Universal horror film, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932) before being cast by the Halperins as the zombie master "Murder" Legendre in WHITE ZOMBIE. 

Lugosi, with his weird "zombie grip" (actually, an early form of isometrics exercise) and his penetrating gaze (there are numerous closeups of his hypnotic eyes), commands the film. A severe widow's peak, mustache and goatee lend him a decidedly Satanic countenance as the commander of an army of zombies sent out to do his unholy bidding. 

Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy) and her fiance Neil Parker (John Harron), journey to Haiti to be wed. Once there, they quickly encounter a native burial ceremony and the mysterious Legendre.  Plantation owner Charles Beaumont (Robert W. Frazier), falls madly in love with Madeline and begs her to marry him instead of the steadfast Neil. Madeleine refuses and Beaumont, who already uses the living dead as slave labor in his sugar cane mill, turns to Legendre for help. But Legendre has plans of his own for the beautiful Madeleine and turns her into the "white zombie" of the title to satisfy his own unspeakable desires. 

Neil and Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), join forces to rescue Madeleine from the clutches of Legendre and return her to the land of the living. 

Shot in only eleven days and with a running time of just over an hour, WHITE ZOMBIE packs an undiluted punch of pre-code horror. While not as well known as its' big studio brethren, ZOMBIE is nonetheless an extremely effective horror film unitizing stellar camera work by Arthur Martinelli, impressive sets (left over from larger productions), matte paintings, angular scene "wipes", a leavening of sly humor, a decidedly twisted sexual undertone and an overall sense of dread and foul deeds. Lugosi delivers a first rate performance while the rest of the cast varies in acting ability. 

But the film moves fast enough that you're never bored or too strongly put off by some of the lesser thespian talents on display here. The goal of WHITE ZOMBIE is to tell a compelling story about ancient rites and superstitions, which may or may not be supernatural in origin and it succeeds admirably. 

I hadn't seen this film in close to twenty years so watching it this afternoon with my buddy J. Aaron, was a real treat. It may not rank among the Universal horrors of the thirties as a favorite but it is certainly a solid, genuinely creepy minor masterpiece. 

Highly recommended.

ANOTHER SON OF SAM

Rescued from oblivion by Austin based AGFA (American Genre Film Archive, and now you know whom to thank or blame), ANOTHER SON OF SAM (1977) is one of those craptastic pieces of exploitation cinema that has to be seen to be believed. 

Shot with all of the visual style and panache of the worst driver's ed film (were there any good driver's ed films?) you sat through in junior high, ANOTHER SON OF SAM looks like it was made by someone who, quite possibly, had never actually seen a real movie before lensing this masterpiece. 

That someone is one Dave A. Adams, a jack-of-all-trades who served as the director, writer, producer, film editor, stunt coordinator and casting director for the film. I think it's a safe bet to assume that good ol' Dave also made the bologna sandwiches that he fed to his hopelessly inept cast and crew. 

The cast, by the way, looks like it was composed of either both the in-front-of and behind-the- camera talent from a local television news department or actors from a third rate community theater. 

The film opens with a series of slides documenting famous serial killers throughout history. By the way, Jack the Ripper only killed five women, not the 15 stated on screen. And since notorious serial killer, David Berkowitz, the so-called "Son of Sam" killer had recently finished his legendary killing spree in New York City, it of course makes perfect sense to entitle the film ANOTHER SON OF SAM, even though the film has nothing whatsoever to do with Berkowitz.  

In an interminable 77 minutes of running time,  one-time-only auteur Adams delivers the story of Harvey, a disturbed young man who was, believe it or not, raped by his mother when he was young. Harvey, a patient in a mental hospital, kills two aides and gravely injures his consulting psychiatrist and then escapes to a nearby college campus, where he kills more people before finally hiding out in an empty girls' dormitory.

Although a title card at the beginning of the film states that it's early summer when the action takes place, when Harvey takes up residence in the dorm, it's empty because it's spring break. Come to think of it, KILLER IN A GIRLS' DORMITORY would have made a better title than ANOTHER SON OF SAM. After all, there was the 1961 classic WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS' DORMITORY and who can forget my all-time favorite children's book, CURIOUS GEORGE IN THE NURSES' DORMITORY?

  I digress.

The local cops aren't up to the task of confronting Harvey with their meager resources so they call in a SWAT team from the nearby big city. Remember folks, SWAT stands for "Special Weapons And Tactics" but this group of Keystone Cops are more like "Special Needs Weapons and Tactics". Other than nifty ball caps, bulletproof vests and assault rifles, these dolts have absolutely no clue or plan for how to get rid of Harvey.

Oh, and remember how it was clearly stated earlier that the dormitory was empty? Turns out it's not. Two girls from earlier in the film are somehow, inexplicably still in their dorm room after the building was supposed to have been cleared by the police. 

Finally, the cops decide to send Harvey's mother (!) (whom he hasn't seen in years), into the dorm to see if she can convince her crazy son to surrender. The two square off, there's a sudden jump cut/splice and somebody (we're never shown if it's his mother or the police), fires six shots into Harvey, bringing his rampage to an end. 

But wait, there's more. Director Adams shoots multiple scenes with an extremely shaky hand held camera to represent Harvey's point of view. Harvey himself is only seen in extreme close ups spotlighting his manic eyes and his totally out of control hairy eyebrows. I suspect those closeups may be of Adams himself. Scenes end abruptly with a freeze frame of the action while the post dubbed dialogue continues. One cop gets gunned down at point blank range yet we see no blood or bullet effects, However, when Harvey is hot, he's an absolute bloody mess. 

There's also a pointless scene early in the film featuring a horrible lounge singer (complete with shirt open to his navel) singing a song in a local nightclub (the club is acknowledged during the opening credits). The college girls, however, are cute and remind me very much of girls I knew when I was in college, which just happened to be in 1977, the year this monstrosity was made. 

So bad it wasn't released, it escaped, ANOTHER SON OF SAM is recommended to all connoisseurs of truly terrible cinema. Everyone else should avoid this one like the plague. 

ALGIERS

Like millions of other fellow baby boomers, I grew up watching the classic Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons on television. The films were constantly shown on all three networks on Saturday mornings, endlessly repackaged (and, alas, edited). I watched them all and loved them all. My favorite Warner Brothers cartoon character was (and still is), Foghorn Leghorn. But I digress...

One of the characters featured in these films was Pepe Le Pew, an amorous (and odorous) French skunk who was constantly in search of love. Pepe, created by legendary animation directors Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese, made his debut in 1945 and starred in 18 cartoons between that year and 1962. But one cartoon in particular, THE CAT'S BAH (1954), stood out from all of the rest. 

Here, Pepe channeled the voice and personality of actor Charles Boyer in an animated riff on the classic film ALGIERS (1938). I had no idea that this cartoon (and it's signature line of dialogue "come with me to ze Casbah") was based on an old movie. But the audiences of the time surely recognized the reference, which only added to the overall cleverness of the character and his milieu. I had no clue that a film called ALGIERS existed, nor did I know who Charles Boyer was. All I knew was that the cartoon was funny and made me laugh every time I saw it. 

For the record, at no point in the 99 minutes of ALGIERS does Boyer ever utter the deathless phrase "come with me to ze Casbah." That's mainly because he's already in the Casbah, that area of Algiers that sits above the city proper and serves as a fortress for thieves and all sorts of illicit and illegal activities. ALGIERS is a remake of the 1937 French film PEPE LE MOKO, with Boyer playing master thief Pepe. He and his gang of thieves (which includes veteran character actor Alan Hale), operate with impunity within the limits of the Casbah, a labyrinthine maze of twisting, narrow alleys and connected rooftops which allow escape from the police when necessary. Pepe may be king of this North African underworld empire but he's also a prisoner. To leave the confines of the Casbah and enter the streets of Algiers proper will surely end in his capture and possible death. 

Pepe's main love interest is the smoking hot Ines (Sigrid Gurie) but she's soon eclipsed when Gaby enters the scene. Gaby, played by the astonishingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr in her first American film, comes to the Casbah dripping with jewels, gifts from her much older (and extremely wealthy ) fiance. Pepe is immediately attracted by the diamonds and pearls Gaby wears but soon becomes smitten with the woman herself. The two yearn to run away together back to Paris where they hope to find happiness. 

Alas, it is not to be. 

ALGIERS is skillfully mounted by director Enter John Cromwell with sinuous camerawork by the legendary James Wong Howe. Howe shoots the Casbah in cramped, low angle compositions, underlining how trapped Pepe is by both his lifestyle and his choice of living quarters. Intrigue abounds, with plots and schemes to capture Pepe launched by both crooks and cops, each meting with failure until the very end of the film.

ALGIERS clearly served as inspiration for CASABLANCA (1942). While it doesn't reach the heights of that masterpiece, ALGIERS is nonetheless a very impressive film. Boyer is at the top of his game, Lamarr is simply breathtaking and the story is fast moving and compelling. Plus, it's earned a place in the pop culture history of the twentieth century thanks to an animated cartoon skunk. Not many films can make that claim.

Recommended.