Noir Films

[JackFavell]

That's true, it's just talking heads. Again, it caught my eye because it gives some backstory to Hank, and Calleia gets a chance to do something.

[ChiO]

Saw THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (John Brahm 1947), a movie I've long wanted to see, on the big screen last night. A fine story with plenty of misdirection and a high body count. Textbook '40s noir cinematography. The dialogue wavered between hard-boiled and standard fare. Nancy Guild was enjoyable as the skittish blonde bordering on madness. Watching Conrad Janis as a Elisha Cook-type was fun and seeing Marvin Miller as a thug wanting thousands (instead of handing out a million) was even more fun. And I always have a soft spot for Roy Roberts and his gruff schtick. Then there was George Montgomery as Marlowe. Suffice it to say he is no Powell, Bogart, Montgomery (Robert variation), Gould or Mitchum.

Overall, a big disappointment. It looked noir and sometimes sounded noir, but I felt no soul of noir. Too pretty, too slick and no grit.

But I am glad to have finally seen it.

[JackFavell]

Marvin Miller!!!!???

[ChiO]

Yes, Marvin Miller. Bowie Kuhn was apparently unavailable.

[movieman1957]

Ah, Bowie Kuhn, Mr. Excitement.

[JackFavell]

I love Marvin and his boringness. What a voice.

[CineMaven]

Saw THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (John Brahm 1947), a movie I've long wanted to see, on the big screen last night. A fine story with plenty of misdirection and a high body count. Textbook '40s noir cinematography. The dialogue wavered between hard-boiled and standard fare. Nancy Guild was enjoyable as the skittish blonde bordering on madness. Watching Conrad Janis as a Elisha Cook-type was fun and seeing Marvin Miller as a thug wanting thousands (instead of handing out a million) was even more fun. And I always have a soft spot for Roy Roberts and his gruff schtick. Then there was George Montgomery as Marlowe. Suffice it to say he is no Powell, Bogart, Montgomery(Robert variation), Gould or Mitchum. Overall, a big disappointment. It looked noir and sometimes sounded noir, but I felt no soul of noir. Too pretty, too slick and no grit. But I am glad to have finally seen it.

I always liked the title of that movie, though I've never seen it. (Sounds like a pirate film). Liked your pithy review ChiO...especially this line:"It looked noir and sometimes sounded noir, but I felt no soul of noir." I always thought Nancy Guild had a Gene Tierney look. I imagine that the movie making her a blonde had to be just wrong...wrong...wrong.

[RedRiver]

It does sound like a swashbuckler!

[ChiO]

Yet another from Republic, TERROR AT MIDNIGHT (Franklin Adreon 1956). Neal Rickards (Scott Brady) has just been promoted to homicide detective. He loans his car one night to his beautiful blonde fiancee, Susan (Joan Vohs) and a man on a bicycle runs into her. Shaken, a kindly little man with a raspy voice, Speegie (Percy Helton), who witnessed the accident, tells her that the man does not appear to be hurt and that he probably hit her intentionally to scam her. If she sticks around she'll be harassed by the police. Between Speegie's story and her fear that being in an accident will hurt Rickards at the station, she takes off. Susan takes the car to a repair shop to repair the damage so Rickards won't know. The garage owner, Fred Hill (Frank Faylen) is a philanderer and immediately puts the moves on Susan. She gets away, and one of the two men in his office, Lew Hanlon (John Dehner) tells him to stop fooling around, otherwise Hill's wino of a wife, Helen (Virginia Gregg) will catch him in the act and rat them out because, you see, Hanlon and his sidekick run a stolen automobile racket and Hill is their mechanic. Before leaving, Susan has seen the silhouettes of two men in the office.

Rickards finds Speegie in his apartment the next night. Speegie has traced the car's license plate to him and wants to blackmail Rickards...until he shows him his badge. Now Rickards is suspicious of Susan's excuse for not returning the car. She goes back to the garage that night to get the car, seeing two men pull out as she arrives. Hill paws her, she smacks him with her purse, losing some of the contents, and runs off. Helen shows up, accuses him of fooling around, he threatens her. He turns his back. She gets into a running car that he's repairing. He's crushed. Homicide shows up. Looks like Susan's now the suspect in the hit-and-run and the murder. But Rickards isn't buying it.

He and Susan visit the faux-distraught Helen to ask if Hill had any enemies. She loses her patience and tells them to get lost, but, as they leave, Rickard's inadvertently picks up Helen's purse instead of Susan's. Helen immediately calls Hanlon to extort money out of him. When Susan is dropped off at home, she notices the purse mix-up, so she returns to Helen's. She notices two men leaving the house as she arrives. She goes in...Helen is dead and now Susan is the suspect in another murder. Susan, though, has a description of the car the two men were driving...Rickards figures there's a connection between Hill and the hot auto ring...the car is found...a car chase ensues...Rickards shoots the sidekick...three times...in the back...as he tries to escape. Hanlon gives up. <CUT> Rickards and Susan are leaving the police station and equilibrium has been restored. (That's not the way Brady's brother would have handled it.)

I hate it when an otherwise fine movie that is moving along crisply, with real potential for a climactic ending, fizzles out. And especially disappointing given the cast from B-Noir Heaven. Not enough Dehner. Extra special added bonus: there is scene with Hanlon and his sidekick in Hanlon's apartment with his special gal, Hazel -- an uncredited Joi Lansing. There's never enough Lansing.

[knitwit45]

Joi Lansing. There's never enough Lansing.

At 38 1/2-23-35 (on "The Bob Cummings Show" (1955)). (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine), you might want to re-think that....

[JackFavell]

What a great cast! I'd watch it just for Percy Helton.

[ChiO]

BAD BLONDE (Reginald LeBorg 1953), indeed!

Young, handsome merchant marine Johnny Flanagan (Tony Wright) gets into a carnival boxing ring to win 5 pounds if he can go three rounds. He, of course, wins by a KO. The carny manager and trainer see their meal-ticket out and take him to an old pal boxing promoter, Giuseppe Vecchi (Frederick Valk), an old, fat, sweaty and rich Italian with a brand-new (need I write "young beautiful blonde"?) wife, Lorna (Barbara Payton), a former taxi dancer. At the first meeting, Johnny and Lorna eye each other with disdain, distrust and lust. Giuseppe and Lorna watch him in the ring and Giuseppe signs him on the spot. Johnny trains at Giuseppe's secluded mansion and the five live together so that there will be no distractions...except for the bodies of Johnny and Lorna whose eyes and hearts shift from lust to what appears to be a reasonable facsimile of love.

She's got him hooked. Each time his conscience tells him, and he tells her, that he can't do this to his benefactor, she falls to pieces. One time she threatens suicide, runs into the night to the conveniently located railroad track, and throws herself onto the track...but Johnny grabs and then embraces her just as the train speeds by (Calling Dr. Freud.). She really sinks her talons in when she tells Johnny she's pregnant. Johnny's torn between his love for Lorna and the baby-to-be and his loyalty to Giuseppe. How can he tell him this? But Lorna has a plan...and shows him some poison pills. No! He can't! So Lorna gives him the ol' brush-off and tells Giuseppe that he's going to be a Papa. Giuseppe is elated to be having a bambino. But Johnny just knows this is wrong, so to make things right...

He hides under a tarp in Giuseppe's fishing boat and, when Giuseppe goes out on his lake for his daily piscatory exercise, Johnny drowns him. Giuseppe's family arrives from the Old Country, and Mama can tell that Lorna is not pregnant just by the look on her face. Realizing he's been duped, Johnny tells Lorna that he's going to call the police the next day. She leaves the mansion, but not before preparing some poison pill soup, which she asks Johnny's manager to give to him because he hasn't eaten all day. The manager later finds Johnny dead and sees some poison pills on the floor. Knowing that Lorna is a conniving bad blonde, suspecting that Giuseppe's death wasn't accidental and that she had convinced Johnny to commit murder, knowing Johnny just wouldn't have committed suicide, and suspecting she had poisoned the soup and planted the pills to make it look like suicide, he plants the pills in Lorna's room and calls the police...who arrive shortly after her return and cart her off.

Sure, the basic plot line is hardly innovative, but the performance of Payton and some nice choices by LeBorg keep the interest level high. Johnny's and the audience's introduction to Lorna is a shot of her leg through a bedroom door as she has her foot on a chair straightening her stocking and fastening it to her garter (no need for Phyllis' anklet there). At the celebration of Giuseppe's announcement that he's having a bambino, there is a shot of him standing and the antlers on the wall appear to be coming from his head. The preparation for Giuseppe's murder is shown with a subjective camera through a slit in the tarp. But the highlight is when Giuseppe and Lorna first see Johnny fight: they are ringside, Lorna in a fur coat, and -- the more Johnny pummels his opponent, the hotter Lorna gets -- there are two climaxes, Johnny KOing the guy and Lorna finally removing the coat and giving Johnny a look that would have made Annie Laurie Starr and Bart Tare blush.

[RedRiver]

This sounds more fun than a barrel of Jack Arnolds! If this film is even remotely well made, it must be a delight.

[ChiO]

Bill Cannon (Dan Duryea) is a Loser in L.A. He loses jobs due to his drinking and now he is losing his beloved wife and little girl. His wife and daughter take off cross-country one morning to stay with her people. Bill is crushed. The next morning, as a guy from the phone company is disconnecting Bill's phone over a $53 unpaid bill, he receives a telegram from his wife -- they were in an auto accident outside of Chicago, the daughter will be operated on today, and his wife will call him at home tomorrow morning. Hence, CHICAGO CALLING! (John Reinhardt 1952).

Now it's a race-against-time to get $53 in 24 hours so he can find out his daughter's condition. All of Bill's initial steps fail. Then he has the opportunity to steal the money, but he doesn't. But someone else does for him and, despite his trepidation, he decides it is borrowing, not theft. But that doesn't work out. As the day and night proceed, Bill is assisted by more Good Samaritans than one thought existed in the Film Noir Universe. But nothing quite works out. Broke and about to be carted off to jail for theft, the phone guy, sensitive to Bill's plight, returns so the call will be received...but Bill is a Loser.

There are several characters, but most come and go. Duryea is in almost every shot and his performance is a tour-de-force. It is his movie all the way, and that is never a bad thing.

For those who adhere to a narrow definition of Film Noir, HOODLUM EMPIRE (Joseph Kane 1952), with its mixture of war melodrama, romance and gangsters, may be a dicey fit. A number of racketeers -- including Joe Gray (John Russell) -- have been subpoenaed to appear before a Senate committee investigating the rackets. John's story is told by each character's flashback as to how they knew him. Joe was a minor hood before going to fight in WWII. Injured, he babbled about the rackets while under anesthesia. One in the unit who overheard him was a Senator who had enlisted. When the war ended, Joe's mentor welcomed him back to the gang, but Joe said he was going straight. That's fine with his mentor, but the other hoods see him as a threat to squeal and plot to kill him. Luckily, by the end, the Senator realizes that Joe is really the good egg he knew in the Army...but there truly is a Hoodlum Empire out there to be busted.

Kane's direction is uneven -- the racketeer scenes are great, but one senses his heart wasn't in the love interest scenes. The cast, however, is a B-Noir dream. It includes: Brian Donlevy, Claire Trevor, Forrest Tucker, Luther Adler, Vera Ralston, Gene Lockhart, Richard Jaeckel, Don Beddoe, Roy Roberts and, with uncredited appearances, William Schallert, Thomas Browne Henry and...Whit Bissell.

[RedRiver]

You're starting to scare me.