cigarjoe
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The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) Public Service Noir
(parts of this from original SLWB review - April 07, 2012)
The title sequence with a giant silhouette of a
woman looming over NYC gives a preview
of the gravity of the unfolding story.Director: Earl McEvoy. Writers: Milton Lehman (a Colliers Magazine article), Harry Essex (adaptation). Cinematography was by Joseph F. Biroc, and music was by Hans J. Salter.
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, Jim Backus, Whit Bissell, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, and William Bishop. This is sort of a companion piece to Panic In The Streets (1950). It's part film noir and part public service education.
The film almost flawlessly transitions between New York location footage, Los Angeles location footage, and studio sets. The only giveaways are the street lamps, New York has the old Bishop's Crook lamps, the L.A. Columbia Studio studio sets use the single globe on a concrete post Hollywood type lamps, and they are also invariably illuminated by bright California sunshine, in contrast to the drabber real Manhattan cityscapes.
Torch singer Sheila Bennett (Keyes) is returning to New York from Cuba. Sheila is the mule in a husband-wife jewel smuggling racket, carrying $50,000 worth of smuggled diamonds, but she is also carrying unbeknownst to her, Smallpox.
She was smart enough to see that she was being tailed once she was in the U.S. on the rail trip from Florida, by a customs agent (Barry Kelley). Shelia had the smarts to mail the ice from some R.P.O. along her route, to her ivory tickling "husband" Matt Krane (Korvin), living in New York City. She arrives at Pennsylvania Station not realizing that she's now carrying the contagious Smallpox virus that spreads on contact which could start a devastating and quickly spreading epidemic in the unprotected city of eight million.
Sheila (Keyes) in a phone booth at Penn Station. Once off the train, she immediately calls Matt. She tells him about the customs agent and her precaution to mail the smuggled diamonds to their apartment in Brooklyn.
Hubby tells her to check into a Times Square dive hotel The America (BTW, this hotel was a dive hangout for showbiz lowlifes, prostitutes, pimps, and a favorite flop where Comedian Lenny Bruce would get geezed). Matt tells her to make sure the agent doesn't follow her to Brooklyn, but in actuality he is playing house while she's been away with her own very eager kid sister, and doesn't want her showing up at their apartment. Nice family.
Sheila is not feeling well, she is now showing the symptoms of Smallpox, she has headaches and back pains and re-occurring fevers. She finds a clinic off Times Square on the way to Brooklyn and there meets nurse (Malone) and Doctor Wood (Bishop). They misdiagnose her with the flu and Dr. Wood gives her some medicine to take.Before Sheila leaves the clinic she gives a small girl a decorative pin, contact with the pin infects the child, Sheila is a walking death spreader. The child soon comes down with the symptoms and other victims begin to show up sick. Smallpox is diagnosed and now Sheila is hunted by Custom agent Johnson while Public Health doctor Wood searches in vain for the unknown person spreading the deadly disease far and wide.
Arriving at her apartment in Brooklyn Sheila finds her baby sister (Albright) there with her Husband. Albright is doing the tube steak boogie with Matt but the increasingly ill Sheila is at first too sick to notice. Meanwhile, Custom agent Johnson loses her when she leaves the hotel through a barbershop, with the help of a bribed bellboy. But het keeps doggedly on the trail, searching theatrical agencies for some leads; while Doctor Wood and an increasingly concerned New York City Public Health Service searches the areas where new victims are turning up from their contacts with Shelia.Sheila eventually finds out from Belle the nosy landlady (Connie Gilchrist), that her husband is double crossing her concerning the diamonds, and is screwing her sister. From that point on she becomes obsessed with finding her faithless shitheel husband Matt. Matt plans to abscond with the loot from the diamonds.Sheila finds out, from the crooked jeweler (Art Smith) they are in cahoots with, that Matt will be back in ten days after the heat dies down, with the diamonds. The medicine from the doctor and her determination to get Matt is keeping her alive. Sheila flees to her brother's (Whit Bissell) Bowery flop house "the Moon" and hides out there.The film is chuck full of great NYC footage circa 1949-50. Shots that haunt the memories of New Yorkers old enough to remember the city as it used to be before the need of historic preservation, when urban renewal, and gentrification changed things forever. Watch for Pennsylvania Station, Times Square, Battery Park and the Third Avenue el.Noirsville
This is an OK thriller, though it does beg the question about what happened to all the other contacts Sheila made before she hit NYC, the people on the boat or plane she took from Cuba, she most assuredly came in contact with before she took the train. Unless she was somehow not contagious during some type of incubation period, but what do I know. This film has great location shots of old Penn Station, various Manhattan locals and a great 3rd Avenue el sequence at the old Chatham Square Station that I've captured and uploaded on Youtube below:Keyes is great in this and her makeup gets increasingly effective conveying her sickness, its part of the Bad Girls of Film Noir set 7/10. Full review with more screencaps here: Noirsville -
But if you think about it
Naked City, In A Lonely Place and The Third Man,won Oscars and Mistery Street was nominated, there may be others, so they could have worked Oscars into the program
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Go Tell the Spartans (1978) A Vietnam War film I never heard of. 8/10
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Tess - pretty depressing tale beautifully shot.
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Mark Isham's haunting Romeo Is Bleeding soundtrack, Empty Chambers followed by the beautiful Romeo Is Dreaming.
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The Silent Partner (1978) A bank teller Eliot Gould is held up at gun point by a Santa Claus (Christopher Plummer), during the holidays in Toronto. The robbery takes place after a large deposit is made. But he's anticipating the heist because of two things, a discarded withdrawal slip he found earlier with identical capitol "G's" that match a hand drawn sign he spots held by the same Santa Claus, and the fact that the Santa was going to rob the bank right after a large deposit was made by a local business man, but he was foiled in the earlier attempt by a small boy who attracted a lot of attention because wanted to tell Santa his Christmas list.
Because the observant teller knows whats coming he devises a way to steal most of the money for himself while letting Santa get away with a portion.
Its a nice little cat and mouse game once the real thief figures out what happened and wants a cut of the loot. Susannah York, Céline Lomez and John Candy round out the rest of the cast . 8/10
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18 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
Starting in March, there will be another Noir Alley showing on Saturday nights at 12:00 AM EST.
No, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre isn't noir, in my book, but rather a regular crime drama, made due to the renewed interest in 20's/30's criminals brought on by TV's The Untouchables and boosted even more by Bonnie & Clyde.
I agree with you there, I just watched The St. Valentine's Day Massacre about a week ago.
But another crime drama that was on recently also Murder, Inc. (1960), starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan, Peter Falk, Simon Oakland, and Vincent Gardenia was close to a Noir, it had the Dutch angles and some stylistics in enough shots to get that noir tuning fork vibrating. I've now seen enough Classic Noir and Neo Noir, to actually say that between the two there is a third, what I'm now calling Transitional Noir that bridges the gap.
Noir was transitioning/morphing into Neo Noir. With the end of studio "B" film production and the weakening of the Motion Picture Production Code, Classic Noir unraveled. Crime stories were syphoning off to TV. Poverty Row, Independent, and other low budget film creators were taking more artistic liberties, and making films targeting certain demographics. So those Film Noir that went too far over the line depicting violence started getting classified as Horror, Thriller (even though they were just say, showing the effects of a gunshot wound, or dealing with weird or kinky serial killers, maniacs, and psychotics, etc.). Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) opened that tangent. Those that went too far depicting sexual, drug, torture, juvenile delinquency, etc., storylines and situations were now being lumped into, or classed as various Exploitation flicks, (even though they are relatively tame comparably to today's films). The noir-ish films that dealt with everything else, except Crime, concerning the human condition were labeled Dramas and Suspense. Those that tried new techniques, lenses, etc., were labeled Experimental films.
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The Big Combo (1955) Noir Masterpiece
Directed by Joseph (H) Lewis (My Name Is Julia Ross(1945), So Dark the Night (1946), The Undercover Man(1949), Gun Crazy (1950). This was Lewis' last Classic Film Noir.
The film stars the usual noir suspects, Cornell Wilde, Brian Donlevy, Richard Conte, Lee Van Cleef, Robert Middleton, Earl Holliman, Ted de Corsia, Jay Adler, John Hoyt, along with Jean Wallace, Helene Stanton, and Helen Walker.
Director of photography was the great John Alton (Bury Me Dead (1947), T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), Canon City (1948), The Amazing Mr. X (1948), Hollow Triumph(1948), He Walked by Night (1948), one of Noirsville's favorites The Crooked Way (1949), Border Incident(1949), Mystery Street (1950), The People Against O'Hara (1951), I, the Jury (1953), and another fave color Classic Noir Slightly Scarlet (1956). The film, consequently, is very dark and quite stylistically lighted as you would expect.
The screenplay was by Philip Yordan, who gave us Dillinger (1945), Whistle Stop (1946), The Chase(1946), House of Strangers (1949), Panic in the Streets (1950), Edge of Doom (1950), No Way Out (1950), Detective Story (1951), Joe MacBeth (1955), and The Harder They Fall (1956).
The story has a sort "Dirty Harry-esque," rouge cop M.O. The tale supposedly takes place in the 93rd Precinct, however there was no 93rd Precinct in 1955. The closest in numbers the 90th and the 94th are located in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Obsessed NYPD Police Detective Lt. Leonard Diamond (Wilde) is on the hunt for sharp dressed, rapidly staccato talking, sadistic, and carnal Brooklyn based mobster Brown (Conte) whose real Italian name is probably Marrone, Marrono or Maronna. Almost all the other goombah's in the Combo have Italian names. Marrone is Italian for Brown.
Its a gritty, violent film noir that shows some surprising sparks of style. Watch for McClure's silent rub out.
A very kinky film indeed, stylishly lit and directed. The whole film has a consistent dark halo around it as if you are peeping on the characters from out of a sewer, we can call it "Sewerscope". The Big Combo has it all, not one but two obsessed characters, a Femme Fatale, sexual innuendos, stylistic lighting and again McClure's (Donlevy) demise is just icing on this cake. There are one or two far-fetched plot points but the film is so overwhelmingly compellingly sleazy that you just go with the (sewage) flow.
One of my favorites, 9/10. Full review with some screencaps in Film Noir/Gangster.-
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The Big Combo (1955) Noir Masterpiece
Directed by Joseph (H) Lewis (My Name Is Julia Ross(1945), So Dark the Night (1946), The Undercover Man(1949), Gun Crazy (1950). This was Lewis' last Classic Film Noir.
The film stars the usual noir suspects, Cornell Wilde, Brian Donlevy, Richard Conte, Lee Van Cleef, Robert Middleton, Earl Holliman, Ted de Corsia, Jay Adler, John Hoyt, along with Jean Wallace, Helene Stanton, and Helen Walker.
Director of photography was the great John Alton (Bury Me Dead (1947), T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), Canon City (1948), The Amazing Mr. X (1948), Hollow Triumph(1948), He Walked by Night (1948), one of Noirsville's favorites The Crooked Way (1949), Border Incident(1949), Mystery Street (1950), The People Against O'Hara (1951), I, the Jury (1953), and another fave color Classic Noir Slightly Scarlet (1956). The film, consequently, is very dark and quite stylistically lighted as you would expect.
The screenplay was by Philip Yordan, who gave us Dillinger (1945), Whistle Stop (1946), The Chase(1946), House of Strangers (1949), Panic in the Streets (1950), Edge of Doom (1950), No Way Out (1950), Detective Story (1951), Joe MacBeth (1955), and The Harder They Fall (1956).
The has appropriately a both equally sleazy and jarring "Jazz Noir" score, with what sounds like an alto sax dominating the piece, was by David Raksin. There is also a film credit listing for Jacob Gimple as a piano soloist.
The film opens the piece with a fly-by of grimy, gritty, grid street lay out of 1950s Manhattan, New York City. All this was replaced just like Los Angeles' Bunker Hill whose soaring skyscrapers are it's modern tombstones. The "Big Apple" is less gritty now in the old Times Square, but apparently just as wormy as in the old days only it's spread out and hidden better.
Once the credit sequence of second unit or stock footage ends the rest of the film is shot with L.A. and studio sets filling in for NYC.
The story has a sort "Dirty Harry-esque," rouge cop M.O. The tale supposedly takes place in the 93rd Precinct, however there was no 93rd Precinct in 1955. The closest in numbers the 90th and the 94th are located in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Obsessed NYPD Police Detective Lt. Leonard Diamond (Wilde) is on the hunt for sharp dressed, rapidly staccato talking, sadistic, and carnal Brooklyn based mobster Brown (Conte) whose real Italian name is probably Marrone, Marrono or Maronna. Almost all the other goombah's in the Combo have Italian names. Marrone is Italian for Brown.
Diamond (Wilde)
Brown (Conte) His oft repeated philosophy is "First is first and second is nobody!" Brown got strong enough to be capo by having Hate in his heart. His favorite form of persuading is using a hearing aid as a torture devise, using, what else, loud degenerate jazz music that features a "real crazy" drum solo. This is followed by a 40% alcohol hair tonic chaser.
Diamond has already spent $18,600 of taxpayer money surveilling one man Brown. He gets berated from Peterson his commanding officer. Diamond's defense is that it's not just one man but a "Combination", the Mob, basically. He get's told that he's fighting the swamp with a teaspoon. Diamond rambles convoluted-ly on telling us he's worried about "the High School kids who come into the city and get loaded and irresponsible, they lose their shirts, and they get a gun, and they're worried and wanna make up their losses, and a filling station attendant is dead with a bullet in his liver.... and I have to see four kids on trial for first degree murder...." Yea, OBSESSED.He's also got a six month hard on for Brown's (Conte's) cute, cultured, blonde, chapping at the bit, bombshell, girlfriend Susan (Wallace). Jay Adler is Detective Sam Hill, Wilde's partner who shadows both Susan, and the two slightly "light in the loafer" escorts Mingo (Earl Holliman) and Fante (Lee Van Cleef). Brown employs these two skells to escort Susan about town. He must figure they are more interested in screwing each other than Susan or women in general. Forgedaboudit, these crooks are all made out in best 50s fashion, to be the lowest of the low degenerates.
Unsubtly later, Susan enforces this when in a night club she tells a former friend of the family that, she no longer plays the piano, now a days all she plays is "stud poke-her". Later on she tells Brown she's wearing what she's wearing instead of white because "white" doesn't suit her anymore.
Fante (Van Cleef), Susan, Mingo (Holliman)
Police Capt. Peterson (Robert Middleton) tells him in the best Noir subtext to forget basically "the ****" Susan, pointing out to Diamond she spent a lot of time "days....and nights" going around the block and around the world with Brown.
Helene Stanton plays a statuesque, voluptuous, brunette burlesque dancer Rita (a sort of a Marie Windsor look-a-like) who is stuck on Diamond. Diamond seems to be just using her for sex.
Diamond (Wide) and statuesque Rita (can't fix stupid, no?) Wilde really needs to see a shrink, he doesn't know a good thing when he sees it, but he also becomes overly obsessed with saving "soiled" dove Susan.
McClure (Donlevy) is Brown's second banana who he inherited when he took over the racket from Grassi who left suddenly for Sicily. Jay Adler plays Diamond's partner Detective Sam Hill. Helen Walker appears rather late in the film as Brown's ex-wife Alicia Brown.
When Diamond first hears about Alicia after Susan takes an overdose of sleeping pills, he rounds up all of Browns known associates and again gets called to the carpet for making 67 false arrests. Ted de Corsia is almost unrecognizable in a nice cameo as the broken English speaking Combo man on the lamb, Ralph Bettini.
The quest to find Alicia eventually sends Brown off to Noirsville.
Noirsville
Diamond (Wilde) on way to Burlesque House to blow off some steam or whatever. 
Its a gritty, violent film noir that shows some surprising sparks of style. Watch for McClure's silent rub out.
Wilde is such an overly obsessive self-righteous prick, you catch yourself rooting for Conte to dump him in the East River with a set of cement overshoes. And speaking of shoes, Wilde has something of a shoe fetish so keep an ear out for Wilde's classic Noir line about Rita, "Saks Fifth Avenue. . . She came to see me in her best shoes."
Conte is just as obsessed with both power and with Susan, at one point we see them, after a confrontation putting the "kink" on. Conte kisses her hard, one of his hands drop out of sight we see her eyes practically roll up into her head before the cut Conte starts heading "south", and you don't need a paint by the numbers picture with circles and arrows to figure out where "things" are going.... and according to the story they have been going on for about four years.
Conte's Brown, is arguably, one of his most memorable characters.
A very kinky film indeed, stylishly lit and directed. The whole film has a consistent dark halo around it as if you are peeping on the characters from out of a sewer, we can call it "Sewerscope". The Big Combo has it all, not one but two obsessed characters, a Femme Fatale, sexual innuendos, stylistic lighting and again McClure's (Donlevy) demise is just icing on this cake. There are one or two far-fetched plot points but the film is so overwhelmingly compellingly sleazy that you just go with the (sewage) flow.One of my favorites, 9/10. Full review with more screencaps here: Noirsville
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11 hours ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
Rooney has never been one of my favorites either, but he is watchable in some movies (BOYS TOWN, NATIONAL VELVET, and THE BLACK STALLION come to mind).
The one movie that I think he really demonstrated some serious acting ability (and he did win an Emmy for it) was his work as a mentally handicapped man in the TV movie BILL.
But even with that, he certainly wouldn't be in my top 10 of favorite actors.
He wouldn't even make it in my top 50 if truth be told.
He's pretty good in the Noirs Quicksand, Drive a Crooked Road and the Transitional Noir Requiem For A Heavyweight.
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3 hours ago, GGGGerald said:
I'm not a wine drinker. If they move to craft beer or "scotch" as posted above, maybe I'll become a fan
Getting back to wine, the most appropriate wine for film noirs is probably a muscatel short dog nicely packaged in a dirty twisted paper bag
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How about some of the below, not sure if they have ever been shown or not:
Satan in High Heels (1962)
Tell Me in the Sunlight (1965)
Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)
Aroused (1966)
The Incident (1967)
Darker Than Amber (1970)
Lenny (1974)
The Killer Inside Me (1976)
Hammett (1982)
Vice Squad (1982)
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
The Kill-Off (1990)
The Hot Spot (1990)
Impulse (1990)
A Rage In Harlem (1991)
The Wrong Man (1993)
The Last Seduction (1994)
Hard Eight (1996)
Mulholland Falls (1996)
Hit Me (1996)
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No, Muller is enthusiastic about Noir, I wouldn't buy it if all of a sudden he's gushing on and on about say musicals.
Find somebody else, don't co-opt him, it's bad enough having to watch his wine club spots.
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The DVDs are pretty pricey on Amazon but Ebay right now has a Korean R0 (all region) DVD for $14.80
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A Bullet For The General (1967), Gian Maria Volontè, Lou Castel, Martine Beswick, Klaus Kinski, one of the first of the Zapata Spaghetti Westerns and a pretty good film, 8/10.
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Steve Cochran's last Film Noir was also very good check out the review here: Tell Me In The Sunlight
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Maybe My World Dies Screaming (aka Terror in the Haunted House) (1958), "director Harold Daniels experimented with subliminal visual messaging. The process was called “Psychorama” (aka “The Precon Process”), and Daniels used single flashes of, say, a skull to convey terror, fluttering hearts to indicate love, a crawling snake for hate, etc. The following year, he tried again, with another Psychorama film, this one a crime drama called Date with Death. But it didn’t catch on, and Daniels abandoned the technique."
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Journey to the End of the Night (2006) Gritty São Paulo, Brazilian Noir
An excellent Neo Noir with an actual "Classic Noir" ballpark runtime of just 88 minutes. I'm impressed.
The film was written and directed by Eric Eason who phenomenally worked some genuine low budget Noir magic. Combine that with Ulrich Burtin's gritty, very grainy, style of cinematography with an interesting production design palette heavy on primary colors by Francisco de Andrade. The film evokes a curious comic book/graphic novel melange of Classic Film Noir, Sin City and Vittorio Storaro's work in Dick Tracy. The films music was by Elia Cmiral.
The tale is filled with lowlifes, losers, and those on life's lowest rungs, as a film noir should be. The cast of characters include, pimps, prostitutes, drug mules, transvestites, gangsters, crooked narcotics cops, smugglers, a soothsayer, a homeless girl, a dishwasher, and a little boy all on their own individual journeys to the end of a single night in the city of São Paulo.
The biggest surprise in the film is Brendan Fraser who director Eason casts (like Sergio Leone did with both Lee Van Cleef in For A Few Dollars More, and Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West) way, way against type as Paul. Seeing Fraser play and enraged degenerate jackass is a jaw dropping, eye opener, he shows quite a bit of range here from his former pathetic good natured schmos as he chews up the scenery.
Mos Def is very likeable as the honest, loyal, Wemba who plugs away at his dangerous mission for a shot at a life of monetary freedom. Scott Glenn gives us a nuanced performance. He's a cold no nonsense successful pimp on one hand but on the other a caring father and loving husband who wants to give his second son a better life. Catalina Sandino Moreno, plays the screwed up former prostitute who flip flops in affection between Paul and Sinatra. Matheus Nachtergaele as the transvestite hooker is quite convincing, as is Ruy Polanah as the extremely spaced out fortune teller.
A nice surprise, its a love it or hate it film, for true Noiristas and AficioNoirdos, 9/10. Fuller review with screencaps here in Film Noir/Gangster.
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Journey to the End of the Night (2006) Gritty São Paulo, Brazilian Noir
An excellent Neo Noir with an actual "Classic Noir" ballpark runtime of just 88 minutes. I'm impressed.
The film was written and directed by Eric Eason who phenomenally worked some genuine low budget Noir magic. Combine that with Ulrich Burtin's gritty, very grainy, style of cinematography with an interesting production design palette heavy on primary colors by Francisco de Andrade. The film evokes a curious comic book/graphic novel melange of Classic Film Noir, Sin City and Vittorio Storaro's work in Dick Tracy. The films music was by Elia Cmiral.
The tale is filled with lowlifes, losers, and those on life's lowest rungs, as a film noir should be. The cast of characters include, pimps, prostitutes, drug mules, transvestites, gangsters, crooked narcotics cops, smugglers, a soothsayer, a homeless girl, a dishwasher, and a little boy all on their own individual journeys to the end of a single night in the city of São Paulo.
The story starts a few months before in a rundown section of São Paulo at Sinatra's Cocktail "Club", a combination strip joint/whorehouse. A Russian mobster is caught with a prostitute and shot full of holes by his **** off wife who then blows her own brains out. He leaves behind a large suitcase filled with heroin.
Sinatra (Scott Glenn)
It's worth a fortune and it just dropped into their laps. The flesh-peddler Sinatra (Scott Glenn), and his cocaine addicted pimp son Paul (Brendan Fraser) concoct a scheme to sell the heroin to Nigerian drug lords who are on a cargo ship docked at the nearby port city of Santos. Sinatra wants to use the cash to get out of the biz with his second wife, an ex club prostitute named Angie (Catalina Sandino Moreno), their son Samy (Gilson Adalberto Gomes), and hop a flight back to the states. Paul wants to just break even on his debts. The deal hinges on a drug mule who can speak Urhobo with the Nigerians.
Paul (Brendan Fraser)
A couple of hours before the drug deal the mule suffers a massive coronary while "having relations" with a Brazilian tranny Nazda (Matheus Nachtergaele). Things now go seriously Noirsville. Sinatra and Paul must rely on the only other Urhobo speaker that they know, their club's dishwasher Wemba (Mos Def). Wemba with the chance of never having to wash a dish in his life again, half goodnaturedly, and understandably, half selfishly agrees to help. He heads off on his odyssey to Santos with the suitcase.
Wemba (Mos Def) Complicating things convolutedly are a series of serious twists. <possible spoilers>
Paul wants to double cross his old man with the help of his goons and take all the moola for himself. He has one man follow his father while the other stakes out Wemba's flop house. Paul is also screwing his old man's second wife. Nice guy.
An informer in the club rats to a narcotics cop who has known all along about the heroin, He knows that a deal is going down, heads to the club and braces Paul for fifty percent of the swag.
Wemba, in classic "hero" mode, makes good on the drug deal on the ship. While triumphantly on his way back to his car walking along a deserted quay with the cash in his backpack, he calls Sinatra on his cell phone. Telling Sinatra of his successful mission he suddenly gets mugged by a couple of strung out addicts who knock him in the head, take his phone and run away. Sinatra hears this and detects that something just went wrong from the abrupt break of contact with Wemba. Paul, who was standing alongside Sinatra, now assumes Wemba has skipped with the cash back to Africa. Sinatra heads to a local Soothsayer (Ruy Polanah) who, obviously, has some serious street creds with the locals, to see if he can divine the whereabouts of his cash cow Wemba.
Paul in an "un-cute" meet gets into a vicious fight with Nazda the tranny, and cuts his face with a straight razor. Nazda now disfigured and obviously "marked down" in street value earning power, is out for revenge.
Meanwhile .... In Santos, a girl named Monique (Alice Braga) comes home and finds her lover in bed with another woman. She gets beaten up in the ensuing fight and flees into the night towards the docks. She comes upon the barley conscious Wemba and helps him to his car. She offers to drive when she sees that Wemba is not fully capable of driving. When Monique and Wemba get back to Wemba's flop, they both get shot at by Paul's hitman which commences a cat and mouse chase through the streets of São Paulo.
All of these events coming at you at lightning speed intertwine inevitably, resulting in a train wreck of a denouement.
Noirsville
The biggest surprise in the film is Brendan Fraser who director Eason casts (like Sergio Leone did with both Lee Van Cleef in For A Few Dollars More, and Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West) way, way against type as Paul. Seeing Fraser play and enraged degenerate jackass is a jaw dropping, eye opener, he shows quite a bit of range here from his former pathetic good natured schmos as he chews up the scenery.
Mos Def is very likeable as the honest, loyal, Wemba who plugs away at his dangerous mission for a shot at a life of monetary freedom. Scott Glenn gives us a nuanced performance. He's a cold no nonsense successful pimp on one hand but on the other a caring father and loving husband who wants to give his second son a better life. Catalina Sandino Moreno, plays the screwed up former prostitute who flip flops in affection between Paul and Sinatra. Matheus Nachtergaele as the transvestite hooker is quite convincing, as is Ruy Polanah as the extremely spaced out fortune teller.
A nice surprise, screencaps from the Alchemy/Millennium February 27, 2007 DVD, its a love it or hate it film, for true Noiristas and AficioNoirdos, 9/10. Full review with screencaps here Noirsville-
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6 hours ago, CaveGirl said:
I just watched...well, not "just" like in the last hour and a half, but more than 12 or more hours ago, a great movie called "The Corpse Grinders". This was directed by Ted V. Mikels, and the V stands for Vincent, as in Vincent Van Gogh or maybe Vincent Van Patten, as you prefer.
The storyline is convoluted. A guy [who kind of looks like Bobby Goldsboro or maybe a young George Segal] has a buddy [who doesn't look like anyone much] and they go into business making cat food and incorporate as Lotus Cat Food Incorporated. Problem...they don't have the ingredients to really make food for felines, so they begin using dead bodies to put into the grinder. I loved the shots down in the factory in front of the grinding apparatus, because it was so colorfully shot, with great red and green filters, a lot like a Star Trek episode. There is a doctor named Glass, who is cute and looks like Robert Horton mixed with a bit of Tom Selleck, and maybe J.D. Salinger had something to do with the screenplay since he always used the Glass family in most of his writings.
I think this is a cautionary tale, much in the spirit of someone like Upton Sinclair and his exposes like "The Jungle" showing how cats are not man's best friend and will turn on you and rip your throat out, for just about anything. Don't blame the cat food since I doubt Kuru would be the diagnosis by any trained epidem...epidemo... uh, stomach doctor. What I mostly enjoyed watching was all the great zooms [which would make Mario Bava so envious!] and I bet the cinematographer went on to some really prestige films after this stirring flick.Oh, there are a few partial nude scenes like when the wife [who looks like she could be either Lulu's mother or Pat Carroll in a red wig] of the mortician guy brings in some girl, whose breasts look like they were made out of silly putty with dents, and when Doctor Glass's nurse is put on the grinder Wabac machine, but all in all they are done quite tastefully. Not as good as Mikel's "Astro-Zombies" and maybe needed a shot of Tura Satana but all in all a wonderful film.
Check out Eating Raoul for some laughs along similar lines.
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I'll go with Julie's version myself.
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The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970) enjoyable, had never seen it before I'll go a 7/10
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The land whales in Nocturnal Animals (2016) are my nomination.
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11 hours ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
GOIN' SOUTH, starring and directed by Jack Nicholson of all people!
A 'comedy' western it's supposed to be....well it got the western part right, but I didn't laugh once.
I recall reading in a movie book a long time ago where it made some comparison with it to THE AFRICAN QUEEN....as if! Nicholson and Mary Steenburgen (who I like BTW) didn't even have 1/10th the chemistry that Bogey and Kate did.
Going South is hilarious, I like it way better than Blazin Saddles. I'd never say it was anything like The African Queen though, who ever wrote that movie book was full of BS.
I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) Public Service Noir
The title sequence with a giant silhouette of a
woman looming over NYC gives a preview
of the gravity of the unfolding story.
Director: Earl McEvoy. Writers: Milton Lehman (a Colliers Magazine article), Harry Essex (adaptation). Cinematography was by Joseph F. Biroc, and music was by Hans J. Salter.
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, Jim Backus, Whit Bissell, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, and William Bishop. This is sort of a companion piece to Panic In The Streets (1950). It's part film noir and part public service education.
The film almost flawlessly transitions between New York location footage, Los Angeles location footage, and studio sets. The only giveaways are the street lamps, New York has the old Bishop's Crook lamps, the L.A. Columbia Studio studio sets use the single globe on a concrete post Hollywood type lamps, and they are also invariably illuminated by bright California sunshine, in contrast to the drabber real Manhattan cityscapes.
This is an OK thriller, though it does beg the question about what happened to all the other contacts Sheila made before she hit NYC, the people on the boat or plane she took from Cuba, she most assuredly came in contact with before she took the train. Unless she was somehow not contagious during some type of incubation period, but what do I know. This film has great location shots of old Penn Station, various Manhattan locals and a great 3rd Avenue el sequence at the old Chatham Square Station that I've captured and uploaded on Youtube below:
Keyes is great in this and her makeup gets increasingly effective conveying her sickness, its part of the Bad Girls of Film Noir set 7/10. Full review with more screencaps here: Noirsville