Like Boxing=Noir which blends the aggressive masculinity of pugilism with the dark shadowy narratives of Film Noir… Director Frank Tuttle’ssuperbly structured gem Suspense 1946 integrates the art of ice-skating featuring the unusual beauty and poise ofBelita. Woven into the story of the love triangle amidst the almost carnivalesque milieu of figure skating, revenge, murder, a mysterious drifter Barry Sullivan as Joe Morgan who is hiding his dark past… Joe insinuates himself into the life of the married couple, skating/dancing sensation Roberta Leonard (Belita) and husband Frank Leonard (The always interesting Albert Dekker Dr.Cyclops 1940, The Killers 1946)
Sullivan and Belita conjure a very believable chemistry… She is classy and conflicted, he is smooth and seriously dark and dangerous.
Joe wants to consume everything around him until he controls the show and the object of his desire… the graceful and seductive Roberta.
The skating scenes are sensational. Belita seems to move on ice and off with effortless grace, the way snow moves through the air with a natural current that finds its mark with a precise beauty of motion. Absolutely stunning to watch, and never detracts from the taut and well-framed noir landscape. Eugene Palette is marvelous as assistant to the boss, Harry Wheeler. His gravel voice and the gentle presence of his obvious girth make him an added pleasure to the coiling tension of the film! Editor Otho Lovering (Stagecoach 1939, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962) weaves a seamless stream of suspense!
Frank Paul Sylos’ (Caught 1949, Suddenly 1954), art direction and George James Hopkins’ ( Casablanca 1942, A Streetcar Named Desire 1951) set design is surreal and haunting.
Â
Barry Sullivan as Joe Morgan –“You’ve got plenty of nerve.. for a girl…”
Belita as Roberta Leonard– “You’ve got plenty of nerve… period!”
Suspensefully Yours… Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl!!!!
Now let me say right here and now, that I do not advocate fat-phobic themes and story lines. I avoided watching this film for that very reason.
“She’s 250 Pounds of Maniacal Fury” -tagline
But on one particular insomnia-ridden night, I felt the urge to try and embrace a 70s horror trope for the sake of being well-versed in my classic horror knowledge. I have to say that I was truly impressed by the simplistic and claustrophobic view with which I experienced Priscilla Alden’s performance. An unstable woman is released from an institution after she is deemed ready to face society again. The film is directed fluidly by Nick ‘Philips’ Millard
The opening titles have such a purely creepy simplicity to them, it makes me think of Saul Bass doing a film school project. It sets up the moodiness and isolation that is pervasive throughout the film.
And what I took away from this very elementary vision of madness was this… This gem of a horror film is NOT about fear of fat girls, or conflating obesity with mental illness. What I got from the story was that Ethel Janowski is just a mentally ill woman, whose food represented her comfort, her freedom, and her identity. And when the interfering people in her life, like her uptight Grandma Janowski (Jane Lambert) or slutty cocaine-sniffing parasite of a sister stand between Ethel and her happiness or freedom… Watch out!!!! I won’t even say that Ethel is a likable anti-hero, she’s belligerent, self-absorbed, anti-Semitic, and homicidal!
One could say that the food is used as a prop to make Ethel appear more grotesque … Or it might be a commentary on how our culture of excess has unleashed a sort of madness.
That’s about it. The idea is that people should be allowed to do what they want even if it’s perceived to be unhealthy for them. Let them eat 6 boxes of Nilla wafers and a gallon of milk. Don’t lock the kitchen cupboard or empty out the refrigerator, don’t be the delivery boy who insists that $4.50 isn’t gonna cover it, treat them like imbecile children or a nosy neighbor.
“Did you know they tried to kill me"¦ that goddam Jew doctor gave them orders not to give me enough to eat"¦ two lousy boiled eggs and a piece of dried toast for breakfast"¦ they were trying to save money and starve me while they were at it"¦"Grandma-"Dr Gerard just wants you to lose a little weight" Ethel- "Why what do I need to lose weight for?”
I never saw Ethel as crazy because she was overweight. It’s everyone else in the film who identifies her illness as being connected with her being ‘fat. I see her as just another off-balanced damaged soul on that old rickety Ferris Wheel of Life., who gets triggered by the people around her to go even crazier when she feels threatened or out of control.
The mood is fabulous, I think of Don’t Look in The Basement the very stark and realistic tone of the plain environment, that still holds a sense of strange & lurking weirdness. Thanks to the cinematography by Karil Ostman and the sound by Ronald Gertz that works so well to conform to the queasy atmosphere and Ethel’s derangement.
or (US dubbed release “The Apartment on the 13th Floor”-again misleading as all the murders take place in Marcos’ little historic house that keyholes the backdrop of modernity and the high-rise apartments of the nouveau riche.
Just a word of warning there is a very disturbing scene in the beginning that takes place in the slaughterhouse. Those of you as sensitive to animal cruelty or killings like myself would advise you to skip the first awful minute and get into the wonderful jazz score by Fernando G. Morcillothat leads you out of the Charnel house and into the openness of the city.
First to clarify one thing about The Cannibal Man… the film has nothing to do with cannibalism, and it is unfortunate that such a moody psychological film should be anchored with a label that would give the wrong impression of the story. I am a fan of Spanish horror films, and I am actually adding this one to my list of favorites, having navigated around the title and sitting with the film on its own terms. A film about an alienated man, who is surrounded by a landscape of modernity taking over the quaint and a pervading sense of loneliness and futility. Marcos is a tragic figure in a very bloody play.
Vincente Parrais perfect as the virile yet detached Marcos… a fascinating character. the archetypal outsider who stumbles into a whirlpool of trouble in a single moment of fate that makes him spiral into a fog of Sisyphusian madness, filled with diss-associative savagery that lifts the film out of ordinary gore into art-house butchery.
Marcos works for the local slaughterhouse. One night while on a date looking for a taxi with his girlfriend, they find a very nasty and violent cabby who kicks them out of his cab when he gets offended by the couple kissing in the back seat. Marcos argues with him and refuses to pay for the ride. The driver actually physically punches Marcos and then assaults Paula (Emma Cohen) In a fit of rage and legitimate self-defense Marcos picks up a large rock and kills Goyo Lebrero the taxista.
Marco manifests a strange neutrality around the situation. Back at Marco’s house, Paula insists on going to the police and telling them what happened. Marco begs her to understand that the police won’t believe it was an accident. “Don’t you see Paula, if I go to the police they will never listen to someone as poor as I am…”
Marcos says that her parents will be furious that she’s been seeing him and he just can’t afford to get into trouble. But… she refuses to listen to him. She breaks it off with him, telling him that she won’t be made a fool of, and marriage shouldn’t be based on lies. You can see Marco begin to uncoil at that moment. “So I can go to the police… or I can go to hell right!”
Marco places the dead Paula on his bed as if she is sleeping. An act of remorse and his growing confusion…
Marco kisses her as his hands crush the life from her throat, we see her struggle, a close-up of her green eyes, and Marcos with a somnambulist sense of self-preservation, a killing machine that must operate to keep himself one step away from the horrible incident with the cab driver and the insanity that has been let out of his head.
What makes the film so eerie and realistic is this nightmarish cycle, this spiraling out-of-control pace where Marco must continue to remove all obstacles that threaten his sense of autonomy as an outlier in the world. Even from the beginning, we get the sense that he is not as interested in marrying Paula as she is in marrying him.
Marcos’ simple little house becoming the ‘killing field’ is more than a bit unsettling.
He begins posing the bodies in his sparse bedroom, using as much room freshener as he can, before the smell of death becomes too obvious. Yet on the outside, he acts as if nothing has happened, or that there are several rotting bodies in his bedroom. He then takes them to the slaughterhouse piece by piece in his duffel bag.
The ordinary look of Marcos’ simplistic home, the bachelor setting, his wall of tools, no frills, no style or I should say money for such privileges is perhaps necessary for the very trappings of an underclass worker in the early 1970s. There is an overt sense to the film about classist friction …
"Noir exploits the oddness of odd settings, as it transforms the mundane quality of familiar ones, in order to create an environment that pulses with intimations of nightmare." – Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen
You can read more about this iconic noir masterpiece in The Dark Pages feature issue.
Here’s the link below to order a copy of The Dark Pages for yourself or subscribe all year round… so you’ll always get your fill of everything Noir from this sensational publication!
Produced by Mark Hellinger (The Naked City, Brute Force, and The Two Mrs. Carrolls Music by Miklós Rózsa; Cinematography by Elwood Bredell (Ghost of Frankenstein 1942, Phantom Lady 1944). Boldly directed by the great Robert Siodmak. The Screenplay is by Anthony Veiller and uncredited co-writers John Huston and Richard Brooks.
The Killers (1946), with its doomed hero, flashbacks, and seedy characters is one of the finest in the film noir canon. The film is a gritty dream with carnal fluidity and monochromatic beauty. The Killers is a neo-gangster noir film with a liminal and evocative intensity. Director Robert Siodmak gives the film a violently surreal tone"” it's a stylishly slick, richly colorful black and white film where the players live in a world condemned by shadow. Burt Lancaster plays out the obsession theme with ‘unfaithful women’ leading to his ultimate demise.
The evocative opening scene is one of the most powerfully ferocious in film noir. It is faithful to Ernest Hemingway's short story. The determined thrust of the first twelve minutes mesmerizes. It has a villainous and cynical rhythm, paced like shadowy poetry in a dark room with no open windows. The film opens with Miklos Rozsa's ominous brassy jazz that later becomes the killer’s motif. Two men drive into a small town, Anywhere, USA. We see them from behind in the darkest black silhouette inside the car.
While cars and trains are iconographic means of escape in noir films, the opening sequence of The Killersoffers no escape. The two gunmen enter the screen in their vehicle veiled by the darkness of the highway road. The vision is more like one of bringing the means of death to this ordinary environment. The peculiar, unsettling gunmen Al and Max (Charles McGraw and William Conrad) are two dark forces invading an ordinary landscape with their malicious and aggressive presence. The dark highway is a typical Hemingway metaphor for the eternal strife, of ‘going nowhere’ and his cycle of ‘heroic fatalism.' The road is an unfinished trajectory, unpredictable and unknown with no way out but "˜the end.'
We see the two walking onto the street silhouetted in shadow. We know they are trouble. They enter a diner reminiscent of Edward Hopper's 1942 painting "˜Nighthawks.' Perhaps this American Diner scene influenced scavenger-hunting director Quentin Tarantino for his Pulp Fiction in 1994.
The men ask about a man they're looking for, "˜the Swede.' They make no effort to hide their malevolence. They revel in belligerence as they demean and degrade the men in the small-town diner. Al and Max begin to psychologically torture George (Harry Hayden) who works the counter and Nick the boy at the end of the counter. They exude an offensive egotism and a cruel antisocial spirit as they barrage the men with perverse assaults.
George: "What'll it be, gentlemen?""¨Max: "I don't know. What you want to eat, Al?""¨Al: "I don't know what I want to eat.""¨ Max: "I'll have the roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes.""¨ George: "That's not ready yet.""¨ Max: "Then what's it on the card for?""¨ George: "Well, that's on the dinner. You can have that at six o'clock. That clock is ten minutes fast. The dinner isn't ready yet.""¨ Max: "Never mind the clock. What have you got to eat?"
The conversation is absurd and meaningless. It is just a mechanism to bully these townsmen. They continue to harass George asking "You got anything to drink?" George tells them "I can give you beer, soda, or ginger ale." Al: "I said you got anything to drink?" George submits a quiet "no." Max says "This is a hot town, whatta you call it?"George: "Brentwood." Al turns to Max "You ever hear of Brentwood?"Max shakes his head no. Al asks George "What do you do for nights?"
Max takes a deep breath and groans "They eat the dinner, they all come here and eat The Big Dinner."The outsider mocks the small-town conformity of eating whatever is served. George looks downward murmuring "That's right"and Al says "You're a pretty bright boy aren't you?"He uses "boy" to demean. George mutters "Sure" and Al snaps back "Well you're not!"
Al now shouts to the young man at the end of the counter "Hey you, what's your name?" he looks earnestly at Al and says "Adams. Nick Adams." Al says, "Another bright boy." There is sadism at work here, almost subconsciously homophobic/homoerotic in the way they are using the term "boy" to subvert these bystanders' manhood. Max says, "town's full of bright boys."
The cook comes out from the kitchen bringing the plates. "One ham and one bacon and" George starts to serve the men the food and asks "Which one is yours?"Al says "Don't you remember bright boy?" the continued use of this phrase truly begins to tear at the layers of our nerve endings. George starts laughing and Max says "What are you laughing at?" "nothing."
"You see something funny?" "No.""Then don't laugh." "Alright."Again Max says "He thinks it's alright." Al says "Oh, he's a thinker." It's an antisocial backlash to an intellectual society that would perceive Al and Max as outcasts. This is where a noir film begins to break the molds of Hollywood’s civilized society. The two intruders have trespassed into an ordinarily quiet community to shatter its sense of security. It is the death of humanism in film language.
Max and Al tie up Nick and the cook in the kitchen. "I'll tell ya what's gonna happen, we're gonna kill the Swede, you know big Swede, works over at the filling station." He lights a cigarette. George says, "You mean Pete Lund?"Max takes the cigarette out of his mouth and the smoke enervates George's face, "If that's what he calls himself"¦ Comes in every night at 6 o'clock don't he?"
Georges asks "What are you gonna kill him for? What did Pete Lund ever do to you?" Max replies," He never had a chance to do anything to us he never even seen us." The conversation is so matter-of-fact that it's chillingly absurd. Again George asks, "What are you gonna kill him for?" Max smirks "We're killing him for a friend."Al pokes his head through the sliding window to the kitchen "Shut up you talk too much" but Max says "I gotta keep bright boy amused don't I?"
When George explains that "˜the Swede' never comes in after 6 pm, the killers head to the station where he works. George unties the men in the kitchen. Nick leaves to warn "˜Swedes,' jumping fences on his way to the rooming house.
At the rooming house, Pete (Lancaster) is on his bed in almost complete darkness, face hidden in the shadows, his body's repose in stark contrast to the backdrop of the frenetic orchestration by Rozsa. Nick enters and urgently warns him about the two dangerous men. Nick asks, "Why'd do they want to kill ya?"He replies: "There’s nothing I can do about it. I did something wrong. Once. Thanks for coming.” His tone is soft and fatalistic.
Nick offers "I can tell you what they're like?" Swede replies "I don't wanna know what they're like… thanks for coming.""Don't you wanna go and see the police?""No that wouldn't do any good." Nick asks "Isn't there something I could do?""There ain't anything to do.""Couldn't you get out of town?" He answers "No… I'm through with all that running around."
A merciful violin plays while Swede remains resigned to the dark bed. His large hands rub his face. We hear the squeaking of a door downstairs as it opens slowly and then shuts. The Swede turns his head looking slightly worried for the first time. He leans up in the bed, the light from outside hitting his face, as Al and Max mount the staircase that leads to his room.
The Swede listens like a trapped animal. He does not betray any fear, only a gloomy resignation that his life is about to end. It is not death that he ponders, but memories and another enemy. Cinematographer Elwood Bredellswitches between close-ups of Lancaster's face and the door, then suddenly the two men come in blasting. From pitch black begins a light show, arcing like electricity striking a void. The canon fire gunshots pour into a field of blackness. The killers walking up the stairs acts as foreplay and the gunfire is like violent intercourse"¦ White hot flashes of light break grave blackness. The last image we see as it fades to black is Lancaster's hand falling limp by the bedpost. The last words we hear are Swede uttering "Charleston was right, Charleston was right."
This is where the powerful prologue ends and Hemingway's story leaves us with no explanation as to the reason for Swede's murder, nor insight into why he acquiesces to his death by not trying to elude the killers and his fate. From this moment on Veiller's screenplay starts to expose the back story of the killing.
Look at the killer chemistry between Lancaster & Gardner… I’d get shot up in the dark for either one…!
Hugh O’Brian as the smarmy Hank Walker–“Haven’t I seen you around?”
Ruth Roman as the tough-as-nails Margot Eliot– “It’s possible. I’ve been there.”
Director Alexander Singer’s melodrama (Singer’s Psyche 59 (1964) starring Patricia Neal who suffers from hysterical blindness, has a much more compelling frenetic slick psychology) Love Has Many Faces comes off as a meandering soap opera in balmy Acapulco Mexico… as Lana Turner plays Kit Jordan a millionairess who marries Cliff Robertson a self-loathing malcontent who sold all 8 pints of his blood to be owned by her. Though her love is as ‘thin as ice…’
Enrique Lucerois marvelous as Lieutenant Riccardo Andrade a Mexican Columbo who is trying to get to the bottom of one of Lana’s young male lovers who apparently committed suicide over their break up.
Aside from wishing that the fabulous Ruth Romanand Virginia Greyhad more of a presence in the film…
Virginia Grey was the audacious Candy in The Naked Kiss 1964 … God she was gorgeous!
… I was struck by two things…
If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know that I love Ruth Roman-she has a raw natural sensuality that dwells in her eyes and oozes out of her pores.“Instant blackmail”Kit is never without a drink or a flashy beach ensemble!
Though I appreciate Paulette Goddard’s work in the 1949 version, the re-filming of Anna Lucastain 1958 again written and scripted by Phillip Yordan with an all black cast is powerful good. Arnold Laven’s direction brings to life a more visually potent assemblage of splendid characters. I go through little bursts of adoration and nostalgia, a while ago it was for Paul Williams… lately I’ve been loving Sammy Davis Jr. Both he and the sensuous depth of Eartha Kittcreate an atmosphere of volatile romanticism.
The story is an engaging and moral tale about young Anna (Eartha Kitt) who is rejected by her sanctimonious father Joe played to the hilt by Rex Ingram (God’s Little Acre 1958, Desire in the Dust 1960) While the rest of the family wants Anna to come home, her self-righteous father can’t resist demonizing his daughter, with an underlying incestuous desire that he is battling. She takes the road of the fallen woman and becomes a good time gal who meets Danny (Sammy Davis Jr.) a cab driving sailor who is as smooth as silk and as fiery as molten lead. Here they are in a surreal sequence that showcases the versatile beauty and ease both performers possess- set against the stirring Elmer Bernstein modern jazz score!
Who can make the sunshine? Sammy Davis Jr can!… Cheers Your Everlovin’ Joey
“Andy… there are forces loose on this earth that you wouldn't believe"¦ I tell ya it would make your hair stand on end!”
The Andy Griffith Show-Season 5, Episode 14 –
“Three Wishes for Opie” aired on Dec. 21 1964
George “Goober Lindsey, Don Knotts as the lovable superstitious deputy Barney Fife and Howard McNear as Floyd Lawson in one of my favorite episodes of The Andy Griffith Show Three Wishes For Opie
Your Everlovin’ MonsterGirl sayin’ watch out for those forces loose on this earth!
