Noir Alley on TCM

[Hibi]

Saw BLACK ANGEL for the first time last night. Interesting "doubling" aspect of the two married couples. And who doesn't love Dan Duryea? (is the guy who plays that Hollywood columnist the oily salesman whispering to Joe Gillis "as long as the lady is paying, why not take the vicuna?" in SUNSET BOULEVARD?)

Yes, I'm pretty sure it was. I noticed him right away!

He had a tad more screen time in BLACK ANGEL but was just as smarmy, lol.

Yeah, same type of character. LOL.



(oh, and I also was delighted to spot Ben Bard from THE SEVENTH VICTIM and THE LEOPARD MAN, plus I think a few other Lewtons. Ben was the bartender)



I missed that! I thought he looked familiar.

[ziggy6708a]

[jamesjazzguitar]

Eddie has been mixing it up with unseen films from Univeral and now this low budget Monogram film.

I guess Eddie heard us!

[C*i*g*a*rTheJoe]

It could be remade, follow the novel, have one of the greatest female protagonists in Noir, and you'd have a completely different Film Noir.

[jamesjazzguitar]

Watched Noir Alley's TCM premier, the Monogram film, I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (1948):

Starring Tom (Don Castle) and Ann (Elyse Knox) as a down-and-out dance team, with Detective Judd (Regis Toomey) one of the many customers she meets. Running at 71 minutes it had its moments but lacked any noir visuals. Eddie's comments were interesting mostly about Elyse Knox. E.g. that she married Heisman trophy winner Tom Harmon, and they went on to have 3 children, one being actor Tom Harmon.

The Woolrich story was changed (which is very common). Eddie went over the original's stories ending and that would have been darker.

[jamesjazzguitar]

Kind of disappointed that I stayed up to watch I WOULDN'T WANT TO BE IN YOUR SHOES. Should have taped it and done a little fast forwarding. The film isn't well paced and the last third drags. Even a 70-minute film can seem too long. As Cigarjoe noted, not much in the way of noir visuals. It's OK, two stars out of four, but I wouldn't be eager to see it again.

In the outro Eddie talks about the improbability of how character X could have found the money to do a certain thing. Obviously it's from the stolen money, dude.

Spoiler Alert for I Wouldn't Want to be in Your Shoes:

Yea, Eddie's comment about where X got the money didn't make any sense. While I felt the spending of the loot was another improbable part of the story (since the unique bills could have been traced back to X and X spent a lot in the same general area), the assumption that the loot was the other stolen money is DUH, Eddie)! Yea, I wouldn't recommend the film but at least it was a premier (since I've seen the vast majority of noir films from the studio-era).

I missed the first 5 or so minutes of the film. I assume this is where X and the wife had some initial contact? To me the wife playing games to get some money out of a sucker was the most interesting part and should have been explored more. I.e. make her appear to be more of a femme fatale (even if she is a fake one).

[txfilmfan]

Kind of disappointed that I stayed up to watch I WOULDN'T WANT TO BE IN YOUR SHOES. Should have taped it and done a little fast forwarding. The film isn't well paced and the last third drags. Even a 70-minute film can seem too long. As Cigarjoe noted, not much in the way of noir visuals. It's OK, two stars out of four, but I wouldn't be eager to see it again.

In the outro Eddie talks about the improbability of how character X could have found the money to do a certain thing. Obviously it's from the stolen money, dude.

Spoiler Alert for I Wouldn't Want to be in Your Shoes:

Yea, Eddie's comment about where X got the money didn't make any sense. While I felt the spending of the loot was another improbable part of the story (since the unique bills could have been traced back to X and X spent a lot in the same general area), the assumption that the loot was the other stolen money is DUH, Eddie)! Yea, I wouldn't recommend the film but at least it was a premier (since I've seen the vast majority of noir films from the studio-era).

I missed the first 5 or so minutes of the film. I assume this is where X and the wife had some initial contact? To me the wife playing games to get some money out of a sucker was the most interesting part and should have been explored more. I.e. make her appear to be more of a femme fatale (even if she is a fake one).

She was a lightweight femme fatale, though, as it's her idea that started the couple down their story arc.

[ElCid]

I found I Wouldn't Want to be in Your Shoes fairly interesting. At least a 3.5. It held my attention all the way through and I thought the acting was fairly good considering the screenplay, rushed production and limited budget with which they had to work.
I don't think Elyse Knox was supposed to be a femme fatale as such. Rather a woman in dire financial straits who saw an opportunity to get to the West Coast that may never happen again. After all she did agree to wait three days for a notice of lost money to show up in newspapers and it didn't.
I like Regis Toomey and agree with Eddie, he should have received a police pension after all the law enforcement officers he played. But, I don't think this was one of his better roles. Not necessarily his fault, but the way the script and maybe even the book were written. Although in love with Elyse Knox, he made too many dumb mistakes for a cop with his experience and position in the PD.
Still not a bad little crime movie for a dreary, wet morning (here).

[jamesjazzguitar]

I found I Wouldn't Want to be in Your Shoes fairly interesting. At least a 3.5. It held my attention all the way through and I thought the acting was fairly good considering the screenplay, rushed production and limited budget with which they had to work.
I don't think Elyse Knox was supposed to be a femme fatale as such. Rather a woman in dire financial straits who saw an opportunity to get to the West Coast that may never happen again. After all she did agree to wait three days for a notice of lost money to show up in newspapers and it didn't.
I like Regis Toomey and agree with Eddie, he should have received a police pension after all the law enforcement officers he played. But, I don't think this was one of his better roles. Not necessarily his fault, but the way the script and maybe even the book were written. Although in love with Elyse Knox, he made too many dumb mistakes for a cop with his experience and position in the PD.
Still not a bad little crime movie for a dreary, wet morning (here).

As Txfilmfan said, the wife is a femme fatale light, in that by leading the detective on she propelled the noir protagonist (her husband), into the dark series of events that almost sealed his faith. I.e. The detective stole the money to land the gal, and it wasn't by accident that he selected the husband as the fall guy. He wanted him out of the way. A femme fatale can have innocent motives. They don't all have to be like Kathie Moffat.

Note that another lame plot twist was the detective deciding to try to help clear the husband. There was no logical reason to do that. His plan had worked without a hitch up until that point: He had the money, and the husband was going to be put to death in a few days. But as Eddie stated, one shouldn't expect Woolrich storylines to be logical. He wasn't likely to end up with the gal, no matter what, but at least he would have had the dough.

[Bronxgirl48]

Eddie said detectives came knocking at the dance couple's door at 3.a.m Christmas Eve. Wrong! They appeared after Knox came home from her shopping spree which of course was not in the middle of the night. I'm not sure whether he unintentionally forgot about this or was just, well, cynically and irresponsibly trying to "gin up" a heightened interest in the more bizarre aspects of a noir storyline for first-time viewers.

As soon as Muller mentioned "lovesick cop" and also said he couldn't reveal more until the outro, I immediately (and correctly for the most part) connected this to a previous movie with a screenplay by the same writer which was confirmed by Eddie after it was over. So basically even though there were a few twists and shall we say new configurations, I didn't feel any real suspense, most especially after a certain character toured a posh apartment with another character who revealed some interesting obsessions.

When Castle was convicted of murder and sentenced, he displayed about as much emotion as if they accused him of walking on the grass. Nothing seemed to bother him too much.

[Bronxgirl48]

Well, I guess my hope (which I mentioned in a previous post) that Muller was only being tongue-in-cheek when he suggested in another Noir Alley segment that "kids" should be exposed early to his Kitty Feral tome because it would teach them not to trust adults was dashed when after the movie tonight he elaborated that "four to eight year olds" would just love the book. So apparently according to Eddie children should start almost at once to become cynical and world-weary.