Film Forno

Here is a beautifully shot low budget film, made in NYC in 1961. What amazing locations, check out Penn Station, an architectural marvel, before it was torn down to put the box of Madison Squarer Garden in it’s place. A real crime against humanity. This movie featurtes a ton of voice over by the great gravel throated Lionel Stander, who was in Once Upon A Time In The West and other cool films, like Unfaithfully Yours by Preston Sturis, and Cul de Sac by that perverted dwarf Roman Polanski.I think the VO was added later to help the film, I don’t think it was in the original script, there is a seperate credit for voice over writing.  The Ending of this film is a classic, you have to see it, kind of reminiscent of the end of Truffaut’s Shoot The Piano Player.The director and Star of this film made another film after this called Pie In The Sky or Terror in the City. I havent seen it but I will be on the lookout for it. Then he went onto direct TV shows. Too Bad. The guy has real talent, he should have stayed in the Cinema. But we all have to make a living. So too bad.

I think there is a re-release of this film happening. I went to see it at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly on a double bill with Nighty Of The Hunter. First time I’ve been in a movie theater since the pandemic! Two great prints! They looked amazing! See it in 35mm if you are able. From the opening Out Of The Tunnel Birth sequence to the terrific ending, it’s worth it!

Robert Parrish

Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming

Here is a supercool film noir, Robert Parrish’s Cry Danger.  It’s worth watching for several reasons, the cast which is great, the locations, including a great trailer park that must have been on Bunker Hill before it was razed. Directed by Robert Parrish, a talented guy who was a child actor in Chaplin films, he wrote a terrific book, Growing Up in Hollwywood that I whole heartedly reccomend. I saw this at a Film Noir festival and Rhonda Fleming was there. I talked to her about this film and we emailed each other. She was real nice. Unfortunately I just read that she passed on in 2020. Farewell! She was 92 I think. Anyway take a trip down Noir Alley into old L.A. and relax.

Here is a film noir I ran across on YouTube. Featuring an ice cold blonde Femme Fatale. Talk about Evil, she takes the Devils Food Cake! Check it out! Would make a great double bill with the Ultra Sleazy, Too Late For Tears, See Dan Duryea out slimed by a super bad Lizbeth Scott!

I love Raymond Chandler’s writing. It was one of the things that made me want to move to Los Angeles. Here’s a movie based on Chandler’s novel Farewell My Lovely. They changed the name to Murder, My Sweet because it was Dick Powell’s first non-singing, dancing role and they didn’t want the public to think this was a musical. I always liked this movie, it’s Studio filmmaking at it’s crazy noir best.

Some excellent montages credited to Douglas Travers, classic stuff, the sequence with the ever smaller doors influenced the opening of The Twilight Zone and there are some great opticals, whenever Marlow gets slugged he falls into an optically printed pool of inky blackness spreading out by his feet.

There’s also double exposed frozen smoke over a section of the film, that image was taken right out of the book and it works nicely.

Also Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) is revealled reflected in the window glass of Marlow’s office by the blinking of an sign on the exterior of the building. A nice touch.

The set-ups can feel a bit hackneyed but I still enjoy the hell out of this flick. The sequence at the fake sanatarium is priceless and oft repeated in other films. it is interesting to compare this film with D.O.A., both are bookeneded by the protagonist telling his story to a police detective at the station house. Murder is a studio production, RKO to be exact, D.O.A. is an independant film made mainly on location, with a lot of on the street photography, kind of proto New Wave. Anyway if you haven’t seen it you’re in for a fun time. It’s a classic tale, Chinatown rips it off, every L.A. detective movie was influenced by it. The one change I didn’t like was making Florian’s bar a white joint. It’s on Central Avenue and is a Black owned bar in the book. It makes the scene of Marlow and Malloy trying to get info on Velma even better, more tense. I’m sure the Black actors could have used the work!

This is a classic movie, iconic L.A. locations, a twisted noir plot, amazing San Francisco street footage, a crazy bebop Jazz sequence and Neville Brand. Where to begin? Well I had a friend in town visiting frome Rome, Italy that is, Trevi Fountain, Cinecitta. Anyway I wanted to show him around downtown L.A. and one of our stops was the amazing Bradbury building. Most people recognize it as the location in Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford fights Rutger Hauer but I think equally as important a use for this location was in D.O.A.

I recommended to my Italian friend that he watch D.O.A. and see how the building we just visited was used in that film. I wound up watching it again and I realized that Russel Rouse was one of the writers and Harry Popkin was the producer.

These guys were responsible for some of the hippest 50’s noir to hit the silver screen of your local drive in. I did not know they were part of the D.O.A. team. Popkin and Rouse worked on The Well, a searing indictment of racism, ahead of it’s time and The Thief. Rouse made Wicked Woman, a film I recently wrote about. So that got me re-interested in D.O.A. , Let me just vsay it right out front I am not a big fan of Edmund O’Brien, but his scene chewing style works pretty well at times in this film and he runs like no one in Cinema! His frenzied run for your life performance on the streets of San Francisco, crashing into innocent bystanders is a highlight of the film.

Other wonderful elements include an incredible sequence aboard a city bus, where the gangsters that want to kill O’Brien are following the bus he’s on and you can see them out the window of the bus at night as they stalk him. A beautiful nightmarish sequence. Actually the nighttime photography of downtown L.A. is particularly great, Neville Brand taking O’Brien for a ride especially.

There is a great wild man jazz sequence that has frenetic performances of Black Jazz musicians that is outstanding. I love musical sequences and this one is a doozy.

I think it would be educational to compare this sequence to some that Robert Siodmak did, like the crazy jazz jam session in Phantom Lady or the dance scene in Criss Cross. The D.O.A. scene is really great performances, great shots and great editing, Siodmak’s reveal a planned out sequence that works beautifully, it was created in the director’s mind while the D.O.A. scene was put together in the editing room.
Rudolph Mate’ the director of D.O.A. started as a camerman in Europe, shooting such masterpieces as Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, this is the movie that Anna Karina watches in Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie. Mate’ also directed a film that was a location on another stop of my downtown tour, Union Station, a noir that takes place at perhaps the most iconic downtown L.A. location.

Rudy at the camera films Dietrich
Mate’ was director of photography on many, many classic Hollywood films, Pride Of The Yankees, Dante’s Inferno, Foriegn Correspondent, Stella Dallas, Sahara, Gilda and The Lady From Shanghai, to name just a few. He delivers a fast paced ( 83 minute) gem that never let’s up and has many especially well directed scenes, take for example the final confrontation, at The Bradbury Building. It is shot just like a classic shootout from a Western, incredible.

Draw, Motherfucker!
Whenever a director can put another subtext or layer of meaning onto a scene and it is harmonius with the action not obtrusive, it’s a wonderful thing. Watch it for yourself, a film class in 2 minutes. Then there’s Neville Brand, so over the top as Chester the thug or maybe goon is better, Sadistic, simple minded, evil but with a lot of personality.

Chester doesn’t like Bigelow. He’s soft in the belly!

I like Neville Brand, check him out in the underrated Eaten Alive by Tobe Hooper. And as Quentin Tarantino once told me, the second most decorated soldier of WWII after Audie Murphy. So check out D.O.A. then go down and visit the Bradbury building, you can park across the street at the Grand Central Market and have lunch.

P.S. Here it is on YouTube.

Here is an interesting movie, Angel’s Flight. Shot in L.A. right before the destruction of Bunker Hill, the characters even discuss the immanent annihillation of the neighborhood, one character, a bartender, wishes he could write so he he could immortalize this vanishing part of L.A., the alky writer he’s talking to finally fullfill’s his dream, penning the pulp noir story of Angel’s Flight.

Bunker Hill, Pre-Razing in all it’s seedy glory!

The same motivation the filmmakers had, capturing the sleazey leftovers of Victorian splendor, Bunker Hill. Once home to the rich and powerful, now Manses cut up into rooming houses, the last stop on the trolley of life.



Filmmakers loved this area, check out Kiss Me Deadly, Criss Cross, The Exiles, Little Shop Of Horrors,The Indestructible Man,Act Of Violence, all shot here. This film reminds me of Touch Of Evil, the grimy bars, strippers, juke boxes,gritty streets at dusk, poetry in the trash heap.

Gimme that old time religion!

There’s even an uptight landlady that is reminiscent of Dennis Weaver’s motel manager from Welle’s classic noir. The story? Beautiful blonde kiler, she was raped as a teen, now she obsesively paints the face of her rapist over and over. She’s a stripper to make ends meet and also to meet men, whom she then dispatches with a straight razor, revenge against the sex of the asshole that raped her. Here comes the Marlboro man, (the writer actually was the first model to represent the Marlboro Man) . He’s a wino, depressed over the death of his wife, he witnesses a murder but was too drunk to know if it really happened.

One of my favorite shots in the movie!

The girl is all mixed up, religious, she goes to church and to a Skid Row Ministry, but anytime a guy puts the moves on her, ZZZZT out comes the razor, kind of like GoGo in Kill Bill.

I’ll cut your ass!

Writer falls for beautiful killer but it’s too late baby. Great idiotic ending on Angel’s Flight. Guess what happens.

Tracks Of Death!

There’s a killing in the 3rd street tunnel, a beautiful spot you can still visit and a lot of crummy Bunker Hill rooming houses right next to Angel’s Flight, maybe where John Fante lived and wrote Ask The Dust.

What can I say, I love movies that are shot in places that no longer exist, the stuff that dreams are made of,here’s a chance to time travel.

Here’s a tasty noir treat from 1953, Wicked Woman. Written by filmmaking team Russel Rouse and Clarence Greene, directed by Rouse, produced by Greene on a shoestring, the movie works despite of our maybe partly due to it’s limitations.

Here’s a lesson to low budget filmmakers, keep your locations to a minimum. Wicked Woman basically has two, a bar and a cheap rooming house. The sets are pretty bad but that’s what makes them good, at one point Billie (the Wiced Woman) throws her sleazy neighbor out and slams the door, the wall of the set shakes, but I think that’s cool, it’s like Fellini said the magician must show the audience he has a card up his sleeve so when he does trick them it’s even more astonishing. This movie works on an iconic level, the Blonde Bombshell travelling from town to town leaving a trail of decimated men and women.

Percy Helton plays the slimy neighbor that has the hots for the Wicked Woman, this guy was in everything including Kiss Me Deadly, the coolest Late Noir of all time.

The Main Title Theme is sung by Herb Jeffries, The Bronze Buckaroo, a black singing cowboy star. Beverly Michaels is great as the Wicked Woman, too bad she retired after only a few more films, maybe she was too real, too ahead of her time to be appreciated. I think she’s great. Russel Rouse must have thought so too, he married her. They had a son Christopher Rouse, he’s a film editor that’s won an Academy Award.

What a great package! You get Robert Siodmak’s 1946 version, the one that introduced the world to Burt Lancaster, that smiling acrobat and great actor.

The beautiful Ava Gardner never looked better.

The filmmaking is top notch, beautful images , great lighting, great sets. The wonderfully evil Dr. Cyclops, Albert Dekker.( I’ve got some great stories about him but I’ll save them for a later post) William Conrad and Charles McGraw are the amoral Killers of the title and they are bad news.

This movie besides being beautifully made by a master craftsman at the height of his powers is a very influential film. The Killers terrorizing ordinary citizens in a lunch box diner, a scene we have seen many times since , the guy from the Past recognizing his prey at an out of the way gas station, a lot like Out Of The Past. The intricate flashback structure, effortlessly pulled off.Miklos Rosza’s score, introducing the theme from Dragnet.

A seminal film! One of the first Film Noirs! Then we get Don Siegel’s The Killers with John Cassavettes, Angie Dickinson, The amazing Lee Marvin, Clu Gulager and in his last role Ronnie Reagen! As a bad guy no less, wow!

This was the first 2 hour movie made for TV except NBC wouldn’t buy it when it was done, too violent! It is good mainly for Lee Marvin as the older Killer, Clu is his young healthnut sidekick.

The sets are pretty amazingly fake looking, especially in BluRay, you can see the blown up photograph backgrounds and rear screen projection a mile away. But in spite of that the movie works, a tribute to good acting and directing. Reagen is great as an evil prick, he even takes part in a heist! I had never seen this gem before and I’m glad I did. I am a big fan of Siegel. This movie is a bit wack but it doesn’t disappoint.

We also get as an adeded bonus, Andrei Tarkovsky’s student film version of The Killers and it’s great. It’s great to hear this dialog in Russian! Super Noir american gangster speak in Russian, how cool is that. They throw in a radio play version acted by Burt, Shelly Winters, and I think William Conrad, it’s cool but the coolest thing is to here Robert Siodmak speak! He’s on the show nd they’re trying to spin that he was born in Memphis Tennessee, a bull story to make him American and not a German! WWII was just over. He sounds very funny! The guy was a genius, he got his US directing break by amusing Preston Sturges and making him laugh. Also we get a recorded interview with Siegel, man can he talk fast! All in all, alot of bang for your buck. Get one today!

Here’s a noir bombshell from1949. Byron Haskin directed it, he was a special effects guy at Warner Bros. and later directed The War Of The Worlds for George Pal. He also directed some of the best episode of The Outer Limits, Demon with A Glass Hand, and The Architects of Fear. Hunt Stromberg produced this “cookie full of Arsenic”. He had a long run as a successful producer at MGM, he came up under Thalberg and worked with Selznick, then he got into a beef with Louis B. Mayer and went independent. This is one of his independent creations. The script was by Roy Huggins, based on his novel and it’s a winner, great characters, excellent dialog, everything top notch except the very end, oh well. Huggins went on to be a giant among TV creators/Producers with such shows as The Fugitive, Run For Your Life and The Rockford Files.

But the real heroes of this opus are Lisabeth Scott as the one of the coldest killers ever to grace the silver screen and Dan Duryea, the slime king. Best known for slapping women onscreen, the poster for this film is Dan slapping Lisabeth! They marketed the film on his woman beater appeal.

I have a theory about noir, WWII is over, soldiers are returning home, a lot of G.I.s got Dear John letters, their wives left them while they were at war. Tokyo Rose would broadcast stories of infidelity by Statebound brides to the soldiers overseas. This led to the creation of the Noir Femme Fatale, the false female, who’ll smile , seduce, and kill without missing a beat, sure they can turn on the waterworks, shed tears at the drop of a hat, but underneath, all business. So here is the returning soldier’s nightmare come true. What’s the one thing a desperate soldier, far from home could think about to give himself some relief from killing, mayhem, explosions? Little Sally Jean, the girl he left swinging on the garden gate. What if Tokyo rose was right? She’s evil, corrupted. His dreams are all Lies! Well, here she is, the beautiful blonde with the morals of a scorpion. Lisabeth Scott is amazing in this film. She turns from a bitchy but seemingly happily married woman in an instant all because of money, the old do re mi, a lot of it that drops in her lap. I don’t want to ruin the story but there are some depraved scenes of her and Dan Duryea getting it on just because he can make her do it, they hate each other! It’s deliciously perverse! According to Eddie Muller, the czar of noir, almost all of the budget went to the two big stars, they were worth it!

It was later re-released under this title
So the production of the film was low budget, a lot of the action takes place in Scott’s apartment but it makes the film psycologically more real in a way. You feel trapped in that nest of evil. There are some scenes in Dan Duryea’s flop, it’s perfect as the dump a small time creepy crook would hang his hat in. Another couple of great locations are Union Station, maybe the most beautiful building still left in L.A. and the lake at McArthur Park, called WestLake Park in the movie. A one time high rent district that’s now kind of funky. Silent Film director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in his bungalow just around the corner. Anyway the film is in poor shape, Eddie’s Noir Foundation did a restoration with UCLA but I don’t think that’s out on video yet so you have to make do with what’s available. But next time it screens at the Noir Festival, I will be there.

Here’s the best looking Youtube version I could find.

The Mann Himself directs Mia Farrow

UCLA is screening a retrospective of the films of Anthony Mann. Mann, a broadway actor turned film director was highly regarded by European filmmakers like Godard and Wim Wenders. His films are visually stunning and well paced, being an actor he got some great performances from his casts. He started making noirs at Republic ,PRC, Eagle -Lion and RKO, doing a lot with a small budget. His noirs are noteworthy for his collaboration with the great cinematographer John Alton. Then he graduated to Westerns, teaming with Jimmy Stewart for several stand out films, like Winchester ’73 and The Naked Spur. Here is a link to the films and showtimes, see you there!

 

Hey I’m on a Norman Foster kick. I just heard about this film. The czar of noir Eddie Mueller showed it recently to an enthusiastic crowd, it has great San Francisco locations and a wonderful final scene at an amusement pier complete with laughing fat lady dummy and roller coaster. An amazing roller coaste sequence that has some almost abstract photography shot from the moving coaster. Very effective, I watched it on YouTube and the quality is not good. Hopefully someone will put a dvd out soon, I’ll buy it!

Plunk your Magic Twanger Froggy and watch Woman on The Run

What a cool movie! Dripping with atmosphere and featuring some powerful performances especially from Steve Cochran and Peter Lorre.

Lorre is one of my favorite all time film actors, check out Friz Lang’s M if you haven’t seen it. Cochran has one of the most distinct physical presences in films, his nastiness  just shoots off the screen in a way like no other actor. He’s just a bad dude.

Bob Cummings is the perfect American everyman, sort of innocent, shocked by what he saw in WWII, messed up but a good egg. He brings to mind a comment Quentin Tarantino made to me about Joseph Cotten, “I love Joseph Cotten, he’s so weak.” Cummings is kind of in that category, but Cotten always had that down at his heels ex-Southern gentleman thing going on, Cummings is just from small town nowheresville.

This film is a kind of confluence of many strange and wonderful things. Based on a book by noir maestro Cornell Woolrich called The Black Path Of Fear, (I ordered a copy) it’s film noir pedigree could not be higher, I believe Woolrich had more novels made into film noirs than anyone else,( I include Val Lewtons The Leopard Man, and Truffaut’s Bride wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid).

The Producer Seymour Nebenzal produced Lang’s M, which Lorre starred in, the director , Arthur Ripley,was an old hand that got started in the silent days and would go on to direct Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road and found the UCLA film school. Michele Morgan, the blond femme fatale, is still alive and living in France. A friend of mine (Duke Haney)reminded me that she was having her home built while this movie was being made,  A kind of French Chalet that would go down in infamy some years later, 10050 Cielo Drive, scene of the grisly Manson murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voychek Frykowski, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent.

Michele Morgan at her Cielo Drive home

The camerman was the amazing Franz Planer, a Vienese transplant who emigrated to escape the Nazis. Planer also shot the beautiful, atmospheric noir Criss Cross for Robert Siodmak. His photography is nothing short of amazing. There is a wonderful sequence of a black limousine racing a locomotive at night , it’s a tour de force of miniatures, rear projection, great low angle shots of Lorre driving, shot through the steering wheel.

The film is in the public domain now, you can watch it on Youtube, but I just learned it was restored by UCLA and screened recently, unfortunately I missed it. Hopefully they will screen it again soon or at a noir festival.