cigarjoe
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Posts posted by cigarjoe
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A bunch of great ones from The Good The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
Blondie: You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.
Tuco: You never had a rope around your neck. Well, I'm going to tell you something. When that rope starts to pull tight, you can feel the Devil bite your ****.
Tuco: Don't die, I'll get you water. Stay there. Don't move, I'll get you water. Don't die until later.
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I'd go with Sergio Leone, and his love of American Westerns that brought about his homages filmed in Spain. How he modeled his protagonist not on John Wayne, but based him on the various real GI Joes he encountered in Rome during WWII. Could make an interesting and quite funny bio pic.
He was also in a bit part as a priest in Bicycle Thieves (on the right below).
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Related Topic, goodbye Chuck.
https://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/chuck-mccann-dead-1.17942024
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House by the River (1950) a Victorian Era Film Noir
A failed writer (Louis Hayward) accidentily murders the cute new maid (Dorothy Patrick) while his wife (Jane Wyatt) is out of the house visiting. He gets his invalid brother (Lee Bowman) to help him dispose of the body in the river by telling him that his wife is pregnant and that the shock might make her loose the baby. The body, concealed in a wood collection bag, pops to the surface and flows back and forth in front of the house driving the writer insane as he chases after it night after night through the flooded tidal islands and marsh grasses in a rowboat. When the body is finally discovered and an inquiery is made, the writer has no qualms letting his brother take the brunt of the courts suspicions. The sequences on the river are a bit reminicent of Night of the Hunter. 7/10
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Delicatessen (1991)
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The Velvet Trap (1966) Campy Exploitation Noir
West Coast Exploitation Noir from director Ken Kennedy. It's a 1966 updated version of what can happen to a "wayward" girl or an independant women. Think of Stella in Fallen Angel (1945). The old double standard morality is quite touching.
Twenty-one years later.
The film opens with a shot of a night time highway. A truck looms up and we get to listen to an inside the cab conversation of the two drivers talking about the charms of a waitess at the truckstop up ahead.
You have your 20 something blond, hash slinger Julie (Jamie Karson), working out of some two lane blacktop roadside beanery. Julie is the star attraction. Truckers head to this lunch counter like ducks to water. Their favorite pastime, a nightly ritual, is feeding Julie change to drop in the juke box for them. When it lights up and plays her selections they all get a free show of Julie's ample assests, her waiterss uniform becomes quite transparent as she wiggles to the beat.
By today's rating standards the film is quite tame, there's a bit of T&A, and some of the Las Vegas locations shots circa 1965 are interesting, but most of the interior sets are all pretty low budget cheap. The Velvet Trap, I guess, alludes to the Nevada whorehouse presided over by an ex silent film star madam, that seems to have all the rooms hung with log velvet curtains. The acting is uneven and at times amateurish, but there are occasional set piece shots that are quite powerful and do really work.
Even though Five & Dime pulp fiction book racks of the day were full of this type of sleazier subject matter, studio Hollywood wasn't gonna touch it straight on even with the demise of the code, they always teased their audiences peripherally. It was the Hollywood outsiders who put these films together, occasionally they'd get actually to the A List in later careers, director Kennedy made The Legend of Grizzly Adams (1990) BTW, but most would never get a foot in the door and sink into the obscurity of straight porn production. An interesting Noir artifact worth a view, 5-6/10. Fuller review with screencaps in Film Noir/Gangster board.
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17 hours ago, rayban said:
John Huston's film version of "Reflections In A Golden Eye" is a vast improvement on the novel - since Major Penderton's "homosexuality" comes so late in the novel.
John Huston saw to it that the Major's homosexuality informed everything that he did in terms of his marriage.
Agree and it's a unique Neo Noir, with more than one alieneated and obsessed individual, and it's own unique "golden" rather than Black & White Noir stylistics.
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A veteran tracker (Jeremy Renner) with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helps the FBI (Elizabeth Olsen) to investigate the murder of a young Native American woman on the Wind River Reservation. Directed by Taylor Sheridan. With Graham Greene, Kelsey Asbille, Tantoo Cardinal, Apesanahkwat, Tokala Black Elk. Beautiful cinematography.
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Zero Effect (1998) Daryl Zero (Bill Pulman) is the world's most eccentric private detective. It's a weird take off on Sherlock Holmes with Ben Stiller as Steve Arlo playing essentially the Dr. Watson part. Together they solve impossible crimes and puzzles. When Daryl is not working and dealing with the mundane everyday world he is essentially clueless with no social skills. He, like Holmes with his violin, passes idle time with his electric guitar, playing bad rock music.
In this case, Zero must find out who is blackmailing a rich executive (Ryan Oneil), who won't tell him, why. The only problem with this case is Zero does something he's never done before, gets emotionally involved with a woman. 9/10
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5 minutes ago, scsu1975 said:
"Shell shock" was used during World War I. "Battle fatigue" was used during World War II. I believe the terms were used exclusively to represent the veterans who had suffered from the war's effects. Since then, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" has been used to describe a variety of cases, not just wartime-related experiences.
I recall George Carlin doing a bit about these three phrases, and how we have "softened" them over the years.
Yea I forgot about "battle fatigue", thanks.
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On 3/27/2018 at 8:04 AM, Sepiatone said:
Problem? What "problem"?
Even a village idiot realizes that back then movies weren't portraying any "reality" of how things were, so why would they NOW think they were?
Oh, sure, they did try to "touch" on certain realities of their times, but really didn't dwell on them too much unless they were an integral part of the story. But more often than not, most were escapism that attempted to lull the audience out of a sense of dreariness and despair, so of course a lot of "upbeat" themes. And I don't see anyone with a brain going into some deep funk because their lives aren't going as "swell" as the lives seen in some Fred and Ginger movie. The "reality" of America back then was located somewhere BETWEEN "Dinner At Eight" and "The Grapes Of Wrath".
Sepiatone
I'd like to hear the time frame people would give if they were asked to define the decades alluded to in the Make America Great Again slogan.
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1 hour ago, Sepiatone said:
Since nobody's ever heard of any reference to PTSD 50 years ago, your mention of it in your "review" is interesting.
Sepiatone
Didn't they used to call it shell shocked for the obvious cases? I just used the up to date terminology.
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Oddo (1967) Psycho Jazz Noir
From the dark side of Noirsville, this quasi legit Psycho/Sexploitation Film Noir was directed by Nick Millard. (for the record it contains mostly T&A, with shoe, stocking, and lingerie fetish flourishes)
The film is without any dialog in the same vein as Demtnia (1955) but it does have noir-ish voice over narration by Allen Sterling.
It's standard your story of a post war vet, Alan Jaffeo (Martin Donley) undiagnosed with PTSD, coming back to 1960s San Francisco, home to the same crap-hole he left behind with nothing changed.I've written before that I love when this happens. A film is made on the leading edge, the fringe, the avant-garde of a culture at a particular point in time. This film is for all intents and purposes a Noir. The subject matter is dark and kinky, it's character is obsessed. The films whole milieu is alienated from the face of society we like to normally show. The film depicts things taboo in polite society. The film is slightly ahead of what will become tolerated and/or perfectly acceptable in time. The culture, (to paraphrase Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity) has a speed limit. Any film that explores taboo subject matter or goes past the speed limit of the culture is considered off beat, kinky, exploitative, obscene and is too far out there for what passed as normal. It gets bumped off the cultural highway into relative obscurity.
Definitely worth a watch 7/10. Fuller review with some screencaps in Film Noir/Gangster board page.
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Oddo (1967) Psycho Jazz Noir
From the dark side of Noirsville, this quasi legit Psycho/Sexploitation Film Noir was directed by Nick Millard. (for the record it contains mostly T&A, with shoe, stocking, and lingerie fetish flourishes)
Millard, it looks like from his IMDb page, started off directing Comedy Erotica drifting over into Nudie Cutie SyFy, and various soft core Sexploitation Fetish Dramas, Fantasies, and Thrillers. In Oddo he turned a run of the mill serial killer fetish flick into an interesting Transitional Film Noir. It fits right in with Psycho (1960), The Thrill Killers(1964), Angels Flight (1964), The Strangler (1964), Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965), Aroused(1966), The Sex Killer (1967), and The Honeymoon Killers (1969).
The film is without any dialog in the same vein as Dementia (1955) but it does have noir-ish voice over narration by Allen Sterling.
It's your standard story of a post war vet, Alan Jaffeo (Martin Donley) undiagnosed with PTSD, coming back to San Francisco, home to the same ****-hole he left behind with nothing changed.
Alan Jaffeo (Martin Donley)
Any benefit from his two years as a Green Beret is shattered when he first gets into a fight with his old neighborhood bullies, finds the girl he left behind shacking up with a hippie, and anti -Vietnam War protest posters plastered all over San Francisco.The clincher is that afterward, when he finally climbs the dingy stairs up to the residence hotel dive apartment that he calls home, he finds that his telegram sits unopened in the hall his father is passed out drunk on a mattress., and his step mother Jan, is nowhere to be found. He pours himself a drink.
Alan goes into his old room undresses, lays down on his bed, and falls asleep while reading, comic books, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and The Terrible 5.Awakened in the middle of the night, Alan finds his stepmother back at their apartment. She and a sister footfetish-ista (who is uncredited but looks a lot like Valerie Perrine), are both half naked and starting to get into a serious "tongue in groove" session. His last vestiges of any sanity disappear down a rat hole in his head. Welcome to Noirsville!
Stepmom Jan and her friend Alan takes out his knife and murders them both. He takes off into the neighborhood stopping at a children's park to swing on a swing. He gets nauseous and heads out into the city a Terrible "1", a bonafide madman.
Noirsville
In the Tenderloin district he gets his shoes shined at a topless shoe shine, visits the various topless bars and strip joints and ending up in a dingy brothel with a prostitute (again uncredited but she gives off a Susanne Summers vibe). She does her best to try and arouse Alan but only succeeds in getting herself killed. The shoeshine sequence and the brothel sequence both also have a seedy jazz accompaniment. Alan buys a handgun at a pawn shop and rolls a drunk for his wallet. Inside he finds a business card for an expensive call girl whose credentials seem to turn Alan on.
Alan's final encounter is with this call girl Sylvia (Janice Kelly). Sylvia and Alan seem to hit it off and again we get a long make out session to a suitably sleazy tune with Alan fully clothed and Sylvia only in her garter belt and stockings. Sylvia is good but no match for Alan who is after all a madman.
It isn't long before Alan takes the one way "big sleep" ticket out of Noirsville.
I've written before that I love when this happens. A film is made on the leading edge, the fringe, the avant-garde of a culture at a particular point in time. This film is for all intents and purposes a Noir. The subject matter is dark, it's character is obsessed. The films whole milieu is alienated from the face of society we like to normally show. The film depicts things taboo in polite society. The film is slightly ahead of what will become tolerated and/or perfectly acceptable in time. The culture, (to paraphrase Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity) has a speed limit. Any film that explores taboo subject matter or goes past the speed limit of the culture is considered off beat, kinky, exploitative, obscene and is too far out there for what passed as normal. It gets bumped off the cultural highway into relative obscurity.
Definitely worth a watch 7/10. Full review with many more screen caps here: Noirsville -
4 minutes ago, TomJH said:
I don't recall the specifics of The Madonna's Secret too well but I know I found it a moody melodrama, benefiting from some really striking back and white photography. It's definitely worth another viewing.
Yes it did have that, it's very watchabe.
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The Madonna's Secret (1946) - Directed by Wilhelm Thiele, Stars Francis Lederer, Gail Patrick, Ann Rutherford, Edward Ashley, Linda Stirling, Leona Roberts, Will Wright, and John Hamilton. Artist paints models who end up dead. A Republic Pictures Film Noir, that's worth a look if you've never seen it. 6-7/10
The only two actors that I've remember seeing and recognized were Will Wright form countless TV Westerns and John Hamilton fron The Adventures Of Superman.
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8 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
Saw this for the first time in TCM's Summer of Darkness (if my memory is correct). Yea, a well made RKO noir. Good to see Brodie get a starring role and of course we have Burr as the heavy.
Its got some fantastic visual sequences, the swining lamp, and the faceoff against the clock.
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8 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
I haven't seen Blueprint for Murder but it would be the only noir where she played a really bad women. In Vicki she was just a selfish brat and in Pick-Up the classic prostitute with a heart of gold.
In Pick-Up she projects something that's missing in the other two, she just doesn't come off as well in the other rolls, maybe she would have had a longer career if she had gotten a bit type cast. Example Goldie Hawn pretty much played the same type in about three or four films along with her stint in Laugh-In.
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2 hours ago, decojoe67 said:
Jean Peters is likely one of the last actors mentioned in listing femme fatale's, yet she did superb in this film.
It's a real shame she didn't appear in more Noirs, She's great in Niagara, but the other two Blueprint For Murder, and Vicki weren't on the same level.
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2 hours ago, decojoe67 said:
Another actor I always forget to mention when I list great male noir actors - Steve Brodie. Great he is, especially in "Desperate". It's a gem and a classic noir. It's got all the noir elements and holds you from the beginning to the end. Raymond Burr is about as tough and threatening as a noir actor ever got. The scene where the lamp sways and the characters light-up and then darken was a great touch.
Agree it's one of my faves too.
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1 hour ago, decojoe67 said:
"Cry Of The City"! I always forget that one. That's a real gem. How could it not be with Victor Mature and Richard Conte. I love the whole scene with that big tough lady-masseuse. There are so many great NYC noir films. I would say "The Naked City" really ranks up there.
The Naked City is the Gold Standard for NYC noirs but also check out The Killer That Stalked New York, While The City Sleeps, Kiss Of Death, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and The Unsuspected.
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5 minutes ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
The Carol Ohmart(sp?) in THE WILD PARTY has to Be the same one who plays Vincent Price’s ill-fated wife in THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. She was GORGEOUS.
no relation to the early Dorothy Arzner talkie THE WILD PARTY, I assume?
Yes and No
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I'm just throwing this out there, but don't you think our classic movie heritage as curated by TCM preserves a view of America seen through rose colored glasses, that wasn't quite truthful, isn't quite real, it sort of whitewashes everything. Continually reinforcing a false past, and always having happy endings isn't quite helpful, when you know it was never like that. You could say all this culminates into folks trying to make that fantasy real, a Disneyland version of America,
This is why some folks go balistic when TCM programs movies from the 1960's onwards, it doesn't fit their fairytale views.
I know the bulk of films TCM controls is from the Classic Hollywood Era, but do you see what I'm getting at, replaying the same old same old is just positive reinforcement of an ideal that never really was.
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The Wild Party (1956) Beatnik Noir
The more I explore the Noirs from the end of the fifties and into the early sixties, the more I've noticed that besides the fact that, as a lot of the old "hard" Crime genre component was draining quickly over into television, a generational change was also taking place on the silver screen.The visual stylistics were retained but the dark side bad guys, comprised before of mostly gangsters and petty criminals had morphed into the new societal boogie men. Crazed beatniks, surreal artists, jazz musicians, junkie dope addicts, marijuana smokers, poets, juvenile delinquents, commies, floozies, hookers, strippers, porno producers, drunks, serial killer nut jobs, rapists, voyeurs, psychos, schizos, sadists, sexual deviates, and other psychologically damaged individuals. The sixties would add hippies, LSD droppers, pop artists, racists, blacks, Hispanics, draft dodgers, and r*e*d*n*e*c*k*s. (can you believe that was censored????)
The Wild Party even sounds different, the old familiar hard boiled dialogs, are replaced with cool cat hipster, beatnik slang, you dig? It's not of the Classic Noirs it's not of the Neo Noirs, it's in between, one of the Lost Noirs/Transitional Noirs.
Looking back it's quite humorous contemplating that beat speak, bebop jazz, and switchblades were deamed so frightening to the squares out there in 1956 Squareville. Screencaps are from the Spanish Region 2 DVD but the clip on Youtube is obviously superior. Curiously entertaining enough, 6/10. Full review in Film Noir/Gangster and with more screencaps here: Noirsville-
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I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
Secret Beyond The Door (1948) A woman's gothic noir, Joan Bennett in a partial flashback recounts right before she makes her wedding vows exactly how she got into the situation she's in. The title card is very Daliesque, and so are the images that accompany the opening voice over narration (this is only the second noir I've seen where a woman does the voice over, the other being Claire Trevor in Raw Deal (1948)). There are numerous sequences with very stylistic images and others that also feel quite surreal. Bennett is a wealthy woman who inherited her fortune after the death of her brother.
*note Chris Cross' "painting image" of Bennett from Lange's Scarlet Street (1945) on her brother's desk.
The story is about the architect (who's major income is derived from a magazine he publishes) that she meets and marries in Mexico. Arriving back at his upstate NY estate, she discovers that he is a widower and has a young son he never told her about. He lives in a mansion with a new wing he built that contains a sort of macabre museum of the actual rooms (yes he bought dismanteled them and reassembled them) where murders have taken place. It's some mania he has about how the room effects events in peoples lives. He also lives with his weird sister Anne Revere (Clara Mills in Fallen Angel), and a woman with a half burned face. There is one room however that he always keeps locked and she is determined to find the secret behind it.
The house will remind folks of gloomy Collinwood from Bennett's Dark Shadows years with it's locked off West wing, even the son of the architect is named David.
One more memory jog is provided by Natalie Schafer, Bennett's friend Edith Potter, doing her same priggish schtick she made iconically famous later on as Lovey Howell on Gilligan's Island. (PS she does that same schtick in another noir with Joan Crawford in Female on the Beach (1955)).