Noir Alley

[misswonderly3]

On 12/19/2021 at 1:36 PM, JamesJazGuitar said:

Blast of Silence" was worth seeing.    My favorite part of the film was the jazz score.   It helped energize those scenes with little to no dialoged.

 

 

james,  I was going to comment on the score too.  I agree,  the jazz music in it was fantastic.  I was really impressed.  It was genuinely good jazz - some of it reminded me a little of Eric Dolphy.

The only music in it I didn't like was the band at the crummy bar where the main character  ( the hired assassin ) goes, to monitor the target and his girlfriend. There was a bongo-playing singer,  and both the singing and the bongo-playing and the back up band,  I thought were wretched.  Truly irritating.  All of the guy's songs sounded the same,  the lyrics were dreary, and his voice wasn't so great either.

"That said",  the whole place reminded me a little of that crazy underground bar James Stewart visits in Bell Book and Candle, complete with bongos  ( courtesy of Jack Lemmon.)  But the Zodiac Club looks like a lot more fun than whatever that place was.

[misswonderly3]

23 hours ago, Bronxgirl48 said:

I also liked the stuffed penguin.

You did ?  I hated that stupid penguin !  ( Well, actually I thought it was some kind of teddy bear, maybe a panda...)  But the fact is I absolutely loathe all stuffed animal toys, especially teddy bears. Always have.   And if I'd been that guy's girlfriend and he'd brought that ugly thing to me as a gift,  I'd have hacked off its head and thrown it at him !

I  did notice that the killer only killed his target.  He made sure first that the girlfriend wasn't home.  That was a good thing,  I liked him for that.  Only the target was shot,  not the girlfriend.  So often in those kind of movies,  the woman who's with the target when he gets killed also gets killed, not necessarily intentional,  just "collateral damage".  I've always hated it when the poor girlfriend has to die too.  Like the assassins are too lazy to figure out how to murder their mark without harming anyone else.

That happened a lot in The Sopranos.

[Bronxgirl48]

34 minutes ago, Hibi said:

Film was much better w/out all that awful voiceover!

Script for the VO was indeed very bad.   Annoyingly repetitive with those constant "sweaty/cold hands" references.   Hard-boiled narration in noir ought to be concise and terse, not hashing over, in this case, the same boringly meditative thoughts.

[Bronxgirl48]

Miss W., it was a panda; I corrected myself on that in a later post, lol.

Aww, I'm a sucker for stuffed animals!   But I must admit that one did look quite scraggly, even dirty.    Gangsters have lousy taste in everything.

Re:  Collateral damage, there's lots of it in the Godfather films....

[Bronxgirl48]

Miss W., you don't even like this little guy?

[misswonderly3]

20 hours ago, King Rat said:

Would this have been the first studio-released movie to use "Jesus" as a swear word? When Ralph opens the door to Frankie, I believe he says "Jesus," not "Geez," which would be unusual in 1961. By the end of the decade things were very different.

I've been thinking about how different the film would have been if Peter Falk had played Frankie, as originally intended. Was Peter Falk already doing the Peter Falk shtick that many people love, but that I find hard to take for more than a couple of minutes? Falk would probably have found moments of comedy and pathos in the role. Allen Baron's blanker and less actorish approach works very well for me.

I liked the almost attempted rape scene. Laurie, like many another young woman, believes that "misunderstood" bad boy Frankie needs the love of a good woman. Frankie takes her "what you need is a girl" comment as an invitation, which it is, though Laurie expects a sweet tender romantic approach. She learns what Frankie is really like and that rape is not out of the question. She wises up quickly, gets Frankie out of the apartment without a big scene, and finds a boyfriend who may be protection as much as romantic interest.

Yeah,  it's a very thin line between a misunderstanding but the guy stops short when he realizes the woman is actually fighting him off,  and  attempted rape.  That was a disturbing scene.  I do agree with laffite's assessment that Frank took Laurie's kindness and concern for him as an invitation.  But Frank clearly continued to try to force himself on her for quite a while after she'd made it plain it was not what she wanted.  Still, he did stop before anything actually "happened" to her....except of course being thoroughly frightened that some man is going to rape you is something that "happens" to you   ( albeit agreed, not as traumatic as the actual act itself would have been.)

I don't think she "found a boyfriend" after that incident,  you get the feeling that guy was already her boyfriend.  I did notice,  when Frank called her and wanted to come over to her apartment  ( this was after the "attempted rape" scene),  that Laurie made excuses by saying it was Christmas time and she was busy with family visiting.

I thought,  "Wait,  what family?  She and her brother ( "Pete") were orphans,  that's how Frank had met them in the first place, years ago.  Not only no parents,  but since they lived in an orphanage,  it seemed unlikely that there were any aunts or uncles around to take them in either.  So when I heard Laurie mention "family",  I thought,  "nope,  there's no "family",  she doesn't want him to come over for other reasons."

[Cigarjoe cellph]

It looked like one of those cheap carny stuffed animals, Baron probably picked it up in a Time Square Playland arcade. It wasn't gonna be a Gund out of F.A.O. Schwartz., Lol. That budget was small.

 

[Dargo]

On 12/19/2021 at 10:36 AM, JamesJazGuitar said:

Blast of Silence" was worth seeing.    My favorite part of the film was the jazz score.   It helped energize those scenes with little to no dialoged.

 

 

Dang! I forgot to record this weekend's Noir Alley presentation and missed this one because (and ironically in this case and considering the present talk of this film's score) my wife and I spent the weekend down in Phoenix in order to visit the Musical Instrument Museum.

Turned out to be MUCH more interesting and fascinating than I would have ever imagined. It's a beautiful modern building with hundreds and hundreds of excellently done exhibits.

Home - Musical Instrument Museum (mim.org)

(...so James, have you ever gone?...or anyone else around here for that matter?)

[Bronxgirl48]

20 minutes ago, misswonderly3 said:

 

"That said",  the whole place reminded me a little of that crazy underground bar James Stewart visits in Bell Book and Candle, complete with bongos  ( courtesy of Jack Lemmon.)  But the Zodiac Club looks like a lot more fun than whatever that place was.

Since BLAST OF SILENCE wanted to go somewhat "beatnik" they should have used the BB&C French warlock from the Paris chapter singing that assassination song; would have been much more appropriate in that noirish gangster setting than in a supernatural romantic comedy.

[Bronxgirl48]

4 minutes ago, Cigarjoe cellph said:

It looked like one of those cheap carny stuffed animals, Baron probably picked it up in a Time Square Playland arcade. It wasn't gonna be a Gund out of F.A.O. Schwartz., Lol. That budget was small.

 

lol, you're right!

[misswonderly3]

12 minutes ago, Bronxgirl48 said:

Miss W., you don't even like this little guy?

No !  I hate teddy bears  !  I can't stand what I see as contrived cutesiness !  Also,  I've noticed that they're always offered at the site of accidents etc., as though a frigging teddy bear is going to assuage the relatives' grief at the death of their family member . 

I never even liked them as a kid.  Now, all that said,  one of my sons did have a "stuffie" which he carried around with him for a while as a little kid, and which I did actually like.  But that was a Bugs Bunny "stuffie", not a cutesy teddy bear.

[TomJH]

27 minutes ago, misswonderly3 said:

No !  I hate teddy bears  !  I can't stand what I see as contrived cutesiness !  Also,  I've noticed that they're always offered at the site of accidents etc., as though a frigging teddy bear is going to assuage the relatives' grief at the death of their family member . 

I never even liked them as a kid.  Now, all that said,  one of my sons did have a "stuffie" which he carried around with him for a while as a little kid, and which I did actually like.  But that was a Bugs Bunny "stuffie", not a cutesy teddy bear.

It surprises me that there are teddy bear intolerant posters frequenting Noir Alley.

At least, that's how my dog feels.

[Vautrin]

18 hours ago, laffite said:

Maybe there is a certain cover in relative anonymity. Get somebody from a second-rate Burg. But yeah, he walked right into it at the end. I was thinking that the conventional wisdom in this sort of Biz is that if you threaten to back out (even though you eventually go through it), it means your goose is cooked. If so (though it's probably not, though it seemed true in this case), he sure didn't have a clue (and he is no newbie). But what did he think the guy meant on the other end of the line when the latter said, "You're in trouble." for wanting out. Yeah, Rat-Fat Boy is a dump in the dump he lives in, but did he not radiate a certain cool at the party, at least until he stands up (after he shows off by defeating two adversaries at arm wrestling (if that is what that was). I thought he looked good with that beard, I mean not bad for someone who collects sewer rats. I did not think the acting was so bad, I don't think a flick like this needs Award-winning performances, and the voice over though veering perilously close to---what? Cheesiness?---whatever ... still worked, That guy's voice made it work.

 

I know there are some gangster flicks where they will import a hitman from out of town for certain  reasons. Not sure why they decided  to bring

in Cleveland Frankie for this  particular hit, but that's not an important part of  the  story. The  last thing they wanted was  an unreliable hitman,

so his goose  was  pretty much  cooked,  though  he didn't seem to get that. The bearded  rat fancier did look pretty much at  home  at The Village

Gate  among the beatniks. I think the acting  was  okay. In  this type of low-budget crime film it doesn't matter all that much. Yeah, the voice  over

was on occasion rather  pretentious. You're born, you become  a hit man, you die. That's life. But it had its own special weirdness. In totally just

a very enjoyable movie to me. 

[Vautrin]

17 hours ago, jameselliot said:

" But  why would the big guys in NYC not use local talent instead of getting  a hitman from a second rate burg like Cleveland?"  They wanted a killer who likely wouldnt be recognized by the local thugs. Although the guy who grew up with Frankie recognized him immediately in the cocktail lounge.

That may have been a miscalculation on their part, especially  as he used to live there. Well he did  get the job  done and  then

he  was done. Life is a circle, as  Lionel  Stander might have put it.

[Vautrin]

Compared to  fretful Frankie, Travis Bickle was  a barrel of laughs. 

[cigarjoe]

2 hours ago, Bronxgirl48 said:

Since BLAST OF SILENCE wanted to go somewhat "beatnik"

The Village Gate was a real beatnik place and I'm sure all the entertainment was also  the real deal while the stuff in BB&C was all Hollywood.  

[cigarjoe]

5 hours ago, Hibi said:

Blast of Silence was hands down the WORST Noir Alley offering I have watched! (and I think I've seen them all!) It wouldnt have been so bad without that awful narration by Lionel Stander (hate his voice and the atrocious writing of the narration itself). I almost bailed a half hr. in, but decided to watch with the sound off (except for some dialog scenes) and the film was more endurable! Good ending and some nice location shots.

Too bad for you, you might as well stop watching Noirs after 1959, you are just not gonna dig them Hibi as an acquaintance of mine Jo Gabriel puts it on her blog...

""FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" (The Last Drive In)

 

[Hibi]

I probably wouldn't but I'll watch anyway. (LOL). You never know!

[Dargo]

1 minute ago, cigarjoe said:

Too bad for you, you might as well stop watching Noirs after 1959, you are just not gonna dig them Hibi as an acquaintance of mine Jo Gabriel puts it on her blog...

Now if THAT isn't a perfect name for a femme fatale in some noir, I don't know what IS!!!

(...can't ya hear it now?...Mitchum sayin' somethin' like, "Against my better judgment, I always came running whenever that Jo Gabriel dame called me up on the horn.")

[King Rat]

1 hour ago, Vautrin said:

I know there are some gangster flicks where they will import a hitman from out of town for certain  reasons. Not sure why they decided  to bring

in Cleveland Frankie for this  particular hit, but that's not an important part of  the  story. The  last thing they wanted was  an unreliable hitman,

so his goose  was  pretty much  cooked,  though  he didn't seem to get that. The bearded  rat fancier did look pretty much at  home  at The Village

Gate  among the beatniks. I think the acting  was  okay. In  this type of low-budget crime film it doesn't matter all that much. Yeah, the voice  over

was on occasion rather  pretentious. You're born, you become  a hit man, you die. That's life. But it had its own special weirdness. In totally just

a very enjoyable movie to me. 

In Mafioso (1962) they bring Alberto Sordi all the way from Sicily, and he isn't a hitman, just an excellent shot. I'm with you on Blast of Silence. Would I love to see more films like it? No. But it does have its own special weirdness.

[BingFan]

Does anyone know whether Eddie’s prime time introduction of Lady on a Train from last Saturday, Dec. 11, is available for viewing, and, if so, where?

I’m a fan of that movie and would love to hear what Eddie had to say about it.  Unfortunately, I missed it (obviously).

Thanks!

[cigarjoe]

3 minutes ago, BingFan said:

Does anyone know whether Eddie’s prime time introduction of Lady on a Train from last Saturday, Dec. 11, is available for viewing, and, if so, where?

I’m a fan of that movie and would love to hear what Eddie had to say about it.  Unfortunately, I missed it (obviously).

Thanks!

Its on right now just started

 

[mr6666]

[BingFan]

59 minutes ago, cigarjoe said:

Its on right now just started

 

Thanks.  Did they re-use Eddie’s intro from last week?  (It’d be just my luck to miss it twice!)

[cigarjoe]

21 minutes ago, BingFan said:

Thanks.  Did they re-use Eddie’s intro from last week?  (It’d be just my luck to miss it twice!)

I missed the first 5 minutes so don't know