The Back Alley Forums - Noir reviews

The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

sheilaom — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:36:39 GMT

Josef von Sternberg�s The Shanghai Gesture, his last major picture, is characterized as a noir, but this is a film noir staggering through a cloud of opium smoke with fresh bruises on its hipbones. The film�s focus on an investigation into a nighttime world of corruption is one of the reasons for its noir status, not to mention the strong spider-woman in the lead, but in many respects the film eludes classification. Based on a play by John Colton, the script of The Shanghai Gesture was problematic from the start, and von Sternberg was forced to make extensive cuts. The brothel in the play was turned into a casino in the film, but remnants of the original still reverberate. The dirtiest thing in the movie is what happens in your head as you watch it. It is incredible what von Sternberg got away with here.

The casino, with its circular tiers of white balconies, and enormous chandeliers rising up and down in the center, is a dazzling masterpiece of set design, calling to mind Dante's circles of hell. Von Sternberg pulls his camera way back, so that you can see the space in its entirety, and it is dizzying, repetitive, an Escher drawing come to life. The clientele move and call and wave across the vast echoing space in the middle, blackjack tables and roulette wheels in the deep pit below. It is one of the most unforgettable interiors ever captured on film.

Through the casino strolls its owner, Mother Gin Sling (played with icy specificity by Ona Munson). She is a Chinese businesswoman, with her hands in every pocket that counts. The casino is now threatened with closure due to the property being sold to a British millionaire named Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston). Sir Guy Charteris has ulterior motives. His daughter, with the splendidly evocative name Poppy, is now lost in Shanghai, and he has been trying to lure her back to the civilized world. Gene Tierney plays Poppy, and Tierney is at her most damaged and beautiful. She is clearly a drug addict (even her name attests to that), and over the course of the film her addiction to gambling spirals down. Victor Mature, loony and dead-eyed in his fez and white gown, plays Omar, Mother Gin Sling�s right-hand man, and he never lets Tierney out of his sight, making sure she is fed a steady stream of drink/drugs/money. For some reason, he recites portions of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to Poppy, in a bored drone that manages to be ridiculous and scary all at the same time.

Tierney is terrific here, bruised and wild. Von Sternberg�s camera eats her up greedily, ravishing her face, as though marveling at the contours of it with something approaching awe and despair. It is obvious that Poppy can never pay back her gambling debts and so Mother Gin Sling has Poppy just where she wants her. But why, Mother Gin Sling, why? Why do you want to destroy Poppy?

Not to fear. All will be revealed.

The pace of The Shanghai Gesture is glacial. Silence stretches around each bizarre moment in a way that is, at times, effective, and at other times obnoxious. Peter Bogdanovich tried to address the pace of The Shanghai Gesture in an interview with von Sternberg, but von Sternberg was dismissive in his reply. He used that slow pace because it was right for the story. The End. Von Sternberg�s camera moves almost lazily, taking in the faces, the places, the echoing public chambers, and the tension sometimes slackens because of too much dead air.

We meet other characters along the way, most notably Dixie, a showgirl stranded in Shanghai, adorable in her beret and ripped stockings. Dixie is picked up on the street by Omar and put to work by Mother Gin Sling (vestiges of the brothel-plot in the original play). Dixie is played by the kooky wisecracking Phyllis Brooks and she seems to have strolled out of another movie, a sister-in-spirit to the stranded showgirl Jean Arthur plays in Only Angels Have Wings. Phyllis Brooks had a short career, but she makes a wonderful impression here. She goofs off to keep herself amused, lolls about in armchairs waiting to be noticed, and treats everyone with an egalitarian humorous spirit, although it is obvious she is mainly thinking, �What is WITH all of these weird people?� If we had any doubt about how lost Gene Tierney�s Poppy really is, all we have to do is look at Dixie. Dixie comes from a recognizable world, a world she still remembers. At an uptight dinner at Mother Gin Sling�s, Dixie sits at her place at the table, playing with her spoon, putting it over one eye, then the other, making silly faces, hoping someone will laugh. No one does.

Sir Guy has been investigating Mother Gin Sling, and she has been investigating him. She is used to handling such men delicately, but the stakes are higher now, for reasons that remain murky until the very end. She ends up inviting Sir Guy to a Chinese New Year celebration at her home; it will be his entryway into the society of Shanghai. It will also be an emotional ambush. He, unaware of what he is walking into, sees it as his chance to talk some sense into his daughter.

The world depicted in the film is debauched and lawless and the pinnacle of that comes during the Chinese New Year celebration: Mother Gin Sling opens the curtains to her balcony, revealing to her guests what is happening outside. On the street below is a crowd of men, howling up into the sky. Hovering over the crowd is a series of suspended cages, and in each cage is a poorly clad beautiful young woman. The women are terrified. They have clearly been dragged from the street, drugged, probably raped, and then hung up for all to see in cages. You can see the terror in their faces, in the way they try to bring their dangling legs up into the cages for protection. It�s a scene worthy of Margaret Atwood�s creepiest futuristic fantasies, and, for me, it�s one of the takeaway scenes of the film. It comes into my mind often.

Ona Munson, a fascinating actress with a gleaming mask of a face, seems to chew off the ends of her lines with vicious precise little bites. Her gigantic hairpieces threaten to come alive at any moment, Medusa-style, yet she maintains an inner core of self-possession that makes this a riveting performance. It is a testament to Munson�s talent that the hair does not overpower her. It does not. She dominates it. The character has a secret, a secret that has riddled her soul with hatred and a desire for revenge. She is patient. She will wait for the perfect moment to get her pound of flesh. Mother Gin Sling, in her exotic way, is the classic femme fatale of film noir, worldly in her dealings with men, knowing in her manipulations of more conventional females, and canny in her ability to get what she needs, whatever the personal cost.

The descent into the underworld in The Shanghai Gesture is a literal one, with the casino seeming to be carved out of the belly of the earth. There is no comfortable sense that the norms will be righted at the end of the film because there were no norms to begin with. Civilization exists here merely as a dim echo, as though the entire city of Shanghai lives at the bottom of a deep well. Shanghai�s sadistic culture is not something you can observe from a safe distance and then walk away unscathed. It enters into you, marking you for all time.

Loophole (1954)

Steve-O — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:08:57 GMT

This review is from Alan K. Rode.

------------

Hollywood was taking a standing eight count in 1954. The Paramount anti-trust consent agreement of 1948 had forced the major studios to divest themselves of their theatre chains. Second feature �B� movies specifically created for double bills evaporated as television increasingly kept Americans in their living rooms and out of theatres. While the majors radically cut production and resorted to gimmicks including Cinemascope and 3-D to sell tickets, Poverty Row entity Monogram Pictures persevered by producing lower budget movies under the recently unfurled banner of Allied Artists.

Although the Mirsch Brothers would add prestige and money to several Allied Artists releases, the studio stayed true to its roots by continuing to grind out staple fare including the interminable Bowery Boys series along with crime dramas and horror movies leavening the repetitive stream of westerns. This determination to continue producing low budget feature films at a profit was largely due to Lindsley Parsons� production company that operated under the auspices of Allied Artists. Lindsley Parsons was a Monogram veteran who got his start writing oaters during the Depression and knew cut-rate film making inside and out.

Loophole was a prototypical Parsons project as noted by Lindsley (Lin) Parsons Jr. who served as production manager, assistant director and whatever else was needed on his Father�s pictures.

The screenplay for Loophole by actor/scribe Warren Douglas hinged on the tried-and-true plot device of an innocent man being wrongfully accused. The picture gained additional heft via the experienced directorial touch of former cutter Harold Schuster and a professional cast of leading and supporting players. Not that anyone cast in Loophole could be considered as an expensive star. As Lin Parsons remarked during a June 2006 interview: �My Father�s pictures during this period were budgeted at no more than $200,000 with a two week shooting schedule. He typically used actors who were on the way up or on the way down; the price always had to be right.�

Conscientious bank teller Mike Donovan (Barry Sullivan) is left holding the bag when a clever thief (Don Beddoe) blends in with visiting bank examiners and cleans out Donovan�s bank drawer to the tune of $50 large. Sullivan doesn�t notice the loss until close of business Friday and after nervously prevaricating over the weekend, he reports the loss on Monday morning and immediately becomes the sole suspect.

When the police and bank insurance bond investigator Gus Slavin (Charles McGraw) enter the picture, matters become extremely bleak for Donovan and his wife, played by Dorothy Malone. It is at this point where Loophole picks up steam. McGraw�s Slavin is a medieval inquisitor outfitted for mid 20th century L.A. with a creased fedora and a pack of Luckies complementing a pitiless bureaucratic resolve. The script throws in a specific reference to the Slavin character being a former policeman who was apparently cashiered for some type of malfeasance. One immediately visualizes McGraw in the darkened anteroom of a precinct squad room, wielding a blackjack during questioning.

Rather than resorting to physical abuse, Slavin mercilessly hounds Donovan even after the bank fires him and the police essentially wash their hands of the case. The insurance investigator is utterly convinced of Sullivan�s guilt and his own divinity to force a confession through the infliction of pain. Working under a deadline to prevent his firm compensating the bank�s loss, Slavin strives to keep Donovan trapped and broke in a cheap apartment-the house was lost with his position at the bank-through a scurrilous campaign of gossip and innuendo with prospective employers. At his lowest ebb, the former bank teller realizes the organizations that he gave unquestioning trust, the police, the bank, insurance companies, are malicious failures.

Donovan gathers himself, knowing that if he doesn�t find the actual thieves and clear his name, no one else will. Leapfrogging through a set of coincidences that are only believable in a movie like Loophole, he discovers and traps the thieves, gets back his name, his job and ultimately triumphs � or does he? The finale creates a sense of anxious perplexity using the chiseled visage of a lurking McGraw.

In addition to one of Charles McGraw�s most visceral performances, Loophole benefits from a surplus of L.A. location photography and an enjoyable pair of thieves, the reliable Don Beddoe and a wonderfully trampy Mary Beth Hughes. The underrated Barry Sullivan remains a credible protagonist and Dorothy Malone imbues realism into what could have been a thankless role. The movie�s thematic parallel with the Blacklist and Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose historical reckoning during the televised Army investigative hearings was underway when Loophole was released on March 28, 1954, is unmistakable. Six decades afterwards, the film holds up as an able example of late term noir that topically reflects the mores and mood of mid 20th century America.

Lin Parsons candidly recalled that Loophole could have been cast, ��at AA� what with the reputation of hard drinkers such as Sullivan, McGraw and Parsons Sr. He remarked that McGraw�s gruff exterior on screen was not the disposition that the affable thespian brought to the set everyday. Parsons, who would work with McGraw again on The Cruel Tower (1956), remarked that the veteran actor was ��as professional as it gets.�

I�d recommend where you can obtain a quality copy of Loophole except I can�t. The only ones that I�ve located are grainy VHS and DVD transfers from a battered 16mm print. Warner Bros is the rights holder on this Allied Artists title, but does not at present have a screenable 35mm print. What with the recent emergence of obscure titles via the Warner Archive Collection, we can only hope that Loophole will eventually be included as a future release. Unfortunately, I have misplaced Gus Slavin�s telephone number and cannot contact him for assistance.

'Stuck!' : Never Coming to Theater Near You...

Night Editor — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:48:23 GMT

But available on DVD, November 9. From a review courtesy of Amazon.com:

"'Stuck!': A Tribute to the Way It Was" by Amos Lassen

'Stuck!' is a tribute to those old women in prison films and stars Karen Black and Mink Stole . Written and directed by Steve Balderson, it is a gorgeous, black-and-white film noir character piece that feels less like homage and more like a newly discovered classic in the babes-behind-bars genre. The film adheres closely to the things that make a women in prison movie. It takes a serious and reverent approach resulting in a solid movie that truly delivers a punch.

Starina Johnson plays Daisy, a lily-white, virginal young woman accused of murdering her invalid mother. Because of eye witness testimony of a nosy neighbor lady (Karen Black), Daisy is wrongly convicted and sentenced to die by hanging. Once she gets locked down, we're introduced to the small group of prisoners who constitute the rest of the principal cast, and the requisite sadistic guard nicknamed Amazon (Stacy Cunningham).

It's at this point the film really becomes a stage play, the intimate setting and proximity of the players serving to inhibit the growth of Daisy's character. Through her interactions with the other women and a polarizing experience at the gallows, it becomes evident that Daisy's life truly begins when she's facing death as a short-timer.The main focus here is on the performances, and each leading lady has more than enough to emote here.

"STUCK!" contains several moments that hit hard, making it actually better than most of the movies that inspired it. The director's choice of a small cast and keeping the action contained to a minimal setting not only works to maintain the atmosphere of being locked in a jail cell, but it necessitates a great deal of creativity from a film making point of view. The fact that the movie works so well falls squarely on the shoulders of the actors, but competent camera work and editing (and some truly impressive lighting) aid in solidifying the feel of a true cult film.

The very cute Starina Johnson (the pony-tailed babysitter in Watch Out) is Daisy, a never-been-kissed shop assistant whose life is dominated by Taking care of her mother (September Carter). Mama at a depressed point, decides to take her own life and Daisy tries desperately to stop her but fails and she is accused of matricide, found guilty and sentenced to die. On Death Row, she has four companions all of whom are waiting to die.

In a strong cast, the stand-out performance is Stacy Cunningham as the guard, nicknamed `Amazon' by the inmates. She is fantastic, making the character both unrelentingly brutal and human at the same time. She torments and abuses the prisoners which firs with her sadistic streak. Cunningham never goes over the top, never loses the reality of the character and comes across as a very human monster.

There's violence, there's tenderness, there's powerful tension and an incredible lesbian love scene between Daisy and Dutch which, against all known conventions, consists of nothing but two clothed women talking and holding hands. It comes across as not just passionate but borderline erotic and this is achieved by good dialogue, restrained direction and wonderful acting.

In contrasting to the prison scenes is a subplot about Daisy's neighbor, Karen Black, whose testimony landed Daisy in prison. She is unnamed in the film but knows what she saw but did she actually see what she thought she saw? We know the truth but she is worn down by doubt and she caused an innocent girl to be sentenced to death? Black drags every ounce of torture and tragedy out of this situation and makes us remember what a diva she once was.

"Stuck!" is a powerful, skillfully managed slice of women-in-prison drama that never really becomes camp even when it is tongue is in its cheek. Excellent performances, a terrific script and fine direction brings it all together and it is an experience."

Sounds like a good one!

Odd Man Out (1947)

Hard-Boiled-Rick — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:54:14 GMT

"This story is told against the background of political unrest in a city in Northern Ireland. It is not concerned with the struggle between the law and an illegal organization, but only with the conflict in the hearts of the people when they become unexpectedly involved.”

In Odd Man Out, producer and director Carol Reed blends film noir with poetic realism, while trying to remain apolitical. Based on the novel by F. L. Green, the film tells the story of Johnny McQueen (James Mason), who is a district chief of a rebel organization, and the people who exploit his fate.

The film won the British Film Academy's award for the Best British Motion Picture of 1947. Rich in allegory, the story counts the last eight hours of Johnny’s life; a tower clock rings away his hours, daylight fades to night, and rain turns to thick snow. Thematically, Odd Man Out is about reactions to suffering, fate, and faith.

In 1948, the film was nominated for an Oscar in Best Film Editing. The film opens with an aerial shot of a gray city of troubles, and focuses on a tower clock striking 4:00 PM. From the tower clock, the camera tilts down and pans to a man, who walks into a safe house, where we meet Johnny McQueen. Sitting in a windowsill, Johnny instructs his gang about their payroll heist which is scheduled for 5:00 PM at a textile mill. The opening sequence is smooth and continuous, introducing us to the city, the main character, his mission, his gang, and Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan) who loves Johnny.

Reed quickly shows Johnny’s internal conflict. Although disillusioned with violence as a means to political ends, Johnny prepares to carry out his organization’s orders. He will lead the mill robbery. His existential choices are few and narrow. He is an organization man with limited freedom, flowing in a river of fate.

Next, Reed moves to Johnny’s external conflicts. Johnny is physically and mentally unfit for the heist. Having been confined to a prison for several years and a safe house for several months, Johnny is now out-of-touch with the reality of armed robbery. Kathleen begs Johnny not to lead the heist, but he ignores her plea. Sensing Johnny’s weakness, his gang doubts his ability to lead the robbery, stirring tension and foreshadowing trouble.

The payroll heist progresses smoothly until Johnny becomes disoriented during the escape. In Johnny’s moment of hesitation, shown through first person point of view, fate steps in and irrevocably alters his path.

Johnny and a mill guard exchange gunfire, wounding Johnny in the shoulder and collapsing the guard. Before Johnny can get into the getaway car, the driver pulls away, speeding down the road as Johnny clings to the car window. Panicking, the driver refuses to slow down, spilling Johnny onto the street. Indecisive, the driver does not return to pick him up.

Johnny McQueen is the odd man out. For the next seven hours, as he flees a squeezing police manhunt, Johnny struggles to find his way to a safe house, meeting a random array of people, who intertwine with his destiny. We witness citizens who exploit, sympathize, or avoid Johnny’s dilemma. He is a walking conflict for those who meet him – a wounded robber, who has shot a man, and who carries political repercussions. Johnny travels the antihero’s journey.

After falling from the car, Johnny hides in a dark air raid shelter. From this point on, Johnny will not see daylight again. Severely wounded, he hallucinates imaging he is in a prison, displayed in the first-person view. Throughout the film, Johnny’s hallucinations fuse with the vicious reality of his predicament.

In five different scenes in the film, Reed presents Johnny in the first person point of view. We see what Johnny sees, feeling his disorientation and pain. The first person scenes are brief, but effective. First person view transfers Johnny’s emotions to us.

In fact, Reed sculpts the character of Johnny McQueen by showing Johnny in several views: not only first person point of view, but third person omniscient close-up, medium, and long distances. In addition, Reed shows the conflicted reactions of supporting characters to Johnny’s anguish and status, augmenting the main character. We see Johnny through his eyes, the eyes of supporting characters, and our eyes, all of which flow from Reed’s eye.

Like the supporting characters, as viewers we react to Johnny too. Subtly, Reed binds us to Johnny’s plight, drawing on our compassionate, but conflicted emotions.

Bleeding, Johnny leaves the shelter for the city’s maze, stumbling through its dark, wet streets, alleys, and junkyards. He meets street children, a loyal gang member, and Good Samaritans. At film midpoint, he realizes he is doomed. From the Samaritans, Johnny learns he has killed the mill guard. When Johnny leaves their house, he says, “Close the door when I am gone, and forget me.”

Robert Krasker, the film’s photographer, composes striking expressionist shots in the code of classic film noir. Born in Australia, his photography rivals his expressionist contemporaries: John Alton, Nicholas Musuraca, and Gregg Toland. Connoisseurs of The Third Man (1949) will recognize Krasker’s photography in Odd Man Out.

As rain starts to fall, Johnny crawls into a taxi, collapsing in semi-consciousness. Not wanting trouble from the authorities nor the rebels, the taxi driver dumps Johnny in a junkyard with statues of angels. Immediately, a street peddler (F.J. McCormick) spots Johnny, and schemes to gain a reward for turning in Johnny, but doesn’t care whether the reward comes from the rebel organization, authorities, or church. Leaving Johnny behind, the peddler runs off to find Johnny’s priest.

While the peddler negotiates a reward from Father Tom (W.G. Fay) who wants to hear Johnny’s confession, Johnny regains consciousness and leaves the junkyard. Eventually, he staggers into a pub. But the publican doesn’t want trouble either and hides Johnny in a booth, where Johnny hallucinates, in first person view again. As Johnny shouts in delirium, a half-crazed artist (Robert Newton) discovers him; overjoyed, the artist wants to paint Johnny’s dying eyes.

As rain turns to snow, the artist takes Johnny to an abandoned mansion, where he, the peddler, and a quack doctor (Elwyn Brooks-Jones) live as squatters. In the decaying manor, the quack dresses Johnny’s wounds, while the artist paints Johnny. Again Johnny hallucinates, as the artist, peddler, and quack argue about Johnny, fate, and faith.

In delirium, reciting First Corinthians 13, Johnny proclaims, “I am nothing.” James Mason delivers a hypnotic performance, which he considered the best of his career. Reed, whose father was a renowned actor of the London stage, draws out the best in Mason’s acting. Although Johnny’s dialogue is sparse throughout the film, Mason’s facial expressions and gestures of suffering connect with our neurons, pulling up our sympathy. The film made Mason an international star. Punctuating Mason’s appearances, William Alwyn’s musical score weighs solemnly and heavily, coloring character and mood in slate-gray.

In the third act, as heavy snowflakes fall in scenes of abstract expressionism, Reed shifts into high gear of poetic realism. Learning about Johnny’s whereabouts from the peddler, Kathleen finds Johnny, who is half-blind by now, near the city’s tower clock. She expresses her love for him, realizing it is a love they cannot share in life. She wants to spare Johnny from prison and government execution, and keep him forever. Backed up against an iron fence as police close in, Kathleen sacrifices Johnny and herself by shooting at police. Off frame, a machine gun bursts. A ship’s horn blasts. The tower clock strikes midnight.

With a powerfully aesthetic story, Reed incites our subconscious emotions, while lifting our cognitive conscious to a metaphysical plane.

In the late 1940s, Reed performed at the peak of his craft, when in addition to Odd Man Out (1947), he directed Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949) – his triple crown. In 1953, Carol Reed was knighted for his contributions to British cinema.

Odd Man Out would probably have been Reed’s greatest work, had it not been overshadowed by The Third Man.

The air raid shelter scene

The mad painter scene

A striking scene of Johnny hallucinating

Blonde Ice (1948)

Guy Savage — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:23:41 GMT

Blonde Ice (1948) by Guy Savage

�I once said I couldn�t figure you out. I can now. You�re not a normal woman. You�re not warm. You�re cold like ice. Yeah, like ice. Blonde ice.�

The iconic noir femme fatales, boldly created without a shred of sentimentality, are guaranteed to be some of the nastiest women in cinema. Noir isn�t required to include a femme fatale, but it certainly spices up the action when there�s one on the prowl. These femme fatales are women who lack the so-called female qualities of tenderness and gentleness, and they ooze sex appeal thinly stretched over the evil ambition underneath. To the Wicked Women Gallery of Noir which showcases Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), Jane Palmer (Lizabeth Scott), and Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), add Claire Cummings from Blonde Ice. In Claire�s case, she�s arguably trashier, but then Blonde Ice is unabashedly B noir, so perhaps the two go together. What went wrong with the genetic make up of these women? Did they miss their Betty Crocker lessons? Blonde Ice argues that nice girls are left in dead-end jobs while bad girls like Claire clamber over the corpses of the men they use and discard on their way to the top of society. Based on the novel Once Too Often by Whitman Chambers (and the title says it all), the film is a portrayal of a woman whose thirst for money and power unleashes havoc in the lives of the men who are foolish enough to love her.

When Blonde Ice begins, the story of Claire Cummings (Leslie Brooks) is already underway. We don�t know how an �$18 a week stenographer from a hick town� managed to morph into a San Francisco newspaper woman, but even her bemused boss, Hack (Walter Sande), admits that it wasn�t due to talent. The mystery of Claire�s meteorical career is solved for the viewer early in the film when Claire, who�s a pro when it comes to manipulating men, brazenly juggles three suitors on her wedding day--marrying stinking rich Carl (John Holland) and leaving the other two pining at the altar.

The two abandoned suitors are former co workers, and they are very different types of men--the weasely Al Herrick (James Griffith) and the bitterly besotted Les Burns (Robert Paige). One of the big differences between these two is that Al doesn�t mind losing as long as Les loses too. Both men even possess identical cigarette cases which were gifts from Claire, and this nice touch really gets to the heart of Claire�s shotgun--rather than focused--modus operandi. She has the audacity to be caught smooching on the balcony with Les right after the marriage ceremony, and before Claire flies off with Carl, she leaves Les dangling with the atta boy comment that will drive him crazy if he dwells on it too much: �I�ll think of you on my honeymoon.�

The honeymoon doesn�t bode well for the rest of the marriage with Carl lecturing Claire about her spending habits, and it�s clear that Claire, although she doesn�t argue with Carl, doesn�t plan on taking his crap either. But the trouble really begins when Carl catches Claire writing a love letter to Les. Carl angrily cuts the honeymoon short. He returns to San Francisco, threatening divorce and leaving her just enough money to pay the hotel bill. Stinging from the humiliation of being outmaneuvered by Carl, Claire hires a plane and its shady pilot, rubber-check-writer Blackie Talon (Russ Vincent), to fly her overnight to San Francisco, no questions asked�.

The next day, Claire telephones Les to say that she�s coming home early since Carl is wrapped up in some business affairs. Calling Les to heel, Claire tells him to arrange her flight and to pick her up at the airport. Imagine Les�s shock when he escorts Claire home and discovers her husband slumped dead in a chair--an apparent suicide. Claire moves seamlessly from new bride to new widow, and then without missing a beat, she�s a society dame picking up bachelor-about-town attorney Stanley Mason (Michael Whalen), a promising politician for hubbie #2.

One of Claire�s extraordinary characteristics is that she doesn�t bother with the social niceties of the world she intends to conquer. In some ways she doesn�t seem to understand that she is expected to behave in certain ways, and that any deviation from the norm is suspicious. She doesn�t, for example, even pretend to mourn her new, dead husband, and the fact that Carl is the subject of a murder investigation doesn�t stop Claire�s indecent, incautious power grab. Naturally she expects Les, the patient poodle that he is, to wait through the next wedding and presumably dream of a reunion sometime shortly after widowhood number two. If Claire had the patience to wait before harpooning her next victim, there would be a good chance that this cold as ice dame would get away with murder, but patience isn�t Claire�s strong suit. Leslie Brooks plays this role excellently, smirking at the right times while cajoling at others. Even though she seems to get her way at almost every turn, there�s an edge of desperation just beneath the surface, and perhaps that explains why she kills when the men in her life thwart her plans.

The film moves along with almost dizzying speed, and this emphasizes Claire�s loosening grip on reality. Mason�s friend, shrink Kippinger (David Leonard) spots Claire as the loony she is after spending just a few moments in her company, and she even gets some free psycho-analysis in the process. Kippinger is the one man Claire can�t use her wiles on, and so the two tolerate a testy relationship; she doesn�t respect him and his �slimy scientific snooping� and he suspects her �distorted� mind.

Once again noir takes a subversive look at society, and this time it�s the way in which women get ahead. Les complains that Claire isn�t a �normal woman.� Compare Claire to mousy steno June Taylor (Mildred Coles), Les�s plain Jane reliable secretary who pines in the wings for the man she�ll never have. At one point, Hack reads a column she�s written and asks with an air of innocent patronage �did you write this all by yourself?� From his tone, it would have seemed natural for Hack to pull out a gold star and stick it on the article. June, the presumably normal woman in the film, doesn�t tell Hack to stuff his comments, she simply endures his condescending attitude. How insufferable to be �normal� June and watch talentless Claire bag an aging millionaire, a regular newspaper column, and office hunk Les into the bargain. Clearly being nice and normal doesn�t get June a thing except lonely nights and daydreams that Les will one day see her good qualities and come to his senses.

Then again, what of the men who fall in love with Claire? Carl should have called it quits right after the wedding when he caught Les and Claire on the balcony. Les rushes to take Claire back when she�s still fresh from her honeymoon with another man. Mason is ready to risk tainting his promising political career with his association with Claire. Apart from the sexless Kippinger, the only man who seems to really understand and admire the �real� Claire is Al. He�s very possibly as nasty as she is, and he seems to find her revolving door romantic adventures amusing more than anything else.

Blonde Ice, from director Jack Bernhard, was originally made as the support feature for a double bill. The film was considered lost, but this version is lovingly restored by Les Fenton. VCI entertainment released Blonde Ice in 2003, and the DVD includes some tasty yet cheap extras that fit this fascinating B title, including: an article about the possibility that Edgar Ulmer was involved with the script (and it certainly has his touch), a short musical number �Satan Wore a Silk Dress,� bios, trailers, an episode of �Into the Night,� a photo gallery, and an interview with Les Fenton in which he discusses the role of the film collector in film preservation. The picture quality tends to grainy and smudgy, but this tawdry tacky noir is well worth owning.

Cutter's Way (1981)

thekillers — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 11:22:13 GMT

By Andrew Nette

American crime films in the seventies and early eighties were littered with the damaged veterans of the Vietnam War.

They appear in most of the key crime sub-genres: the revenge film (Rolling Thunder), the road movie (Electra Glide in Blue), the drug sub-culture (Who�ll Stop the Rain, the adaption of Robert Stone�s novel, Dog Soldiers), and Blaxsploitation (the 1973 film, Gordon�s War, to name just one of many).

Film noir�s contribution is the 1981 movie, Cutter�s Way.

As Woody Haut argued in Neon Noir, his book on contemporary American crime fiction, Vietnam not only damaged the body politic it blurred the line between the perpetrators of crimes and the people who investigate them. In Cutter�s Way the quest to avenge a young woman�s murder is left to the rejects and outsiders who populate the underbelly of post-Vietnam American society.

Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges), a part-time gigolo and boat salesman, is returning from a late night assignation when his beat-up car stalls in an alleyway. Another vehicle pulls up behind him and in the heavy rain and headlight glare we see a man get out and throw something into a nearby rubbish bin. The car speeds off, nearly hitting Bone in the process. As he walks off in disgust, the camera pauses on a stilettoed female foot protruding from the bin.

Bone returns to the Santa Barbara house he shares with Cutter (John Heard) and his wife, Mo (Lisa Eichhorn). Mo is a sharp-tongued alcoholic. Cutter has a face full of scar tissue, only one arm and a permanent limp from his tour in Vietnam. He�s a ball of barely contained bitterness and fury.

Next morning garbage men find the young woman�s body. Of course the fact that Bone�s car is parked nearby makes him a suspect and the cops bring him in for questioning.

They attempt to sweat a confession out of him, going into how the victim died (badly), even wheeling in her sister, Valerie, to try and guilt trip him in admitting to the crime. However, in the face Bone�s protestations all he could see through the rain was a dark shape in sunglasses, the cops are forced to kick him loose.

Later, pausing with Mo and Cutter to watch a passing parade in celebration of Santa Barbara�s Spanish heritage, Bone thinks he sees the man who might have been the one dumping the body. He�s shocked when Cutter informs him the person he�s fingered is J.J. Cord, a local business big shot.

Cutter slowly starts to put together pieces of evidence linking Cord to the crime. Cord�s burnt out car was discovered in another location on the same night as the woman was murdered. The last place she was seen was a disco across the road from a hotel function attended by the businessman, �a little reception for some oil people�.

While these are at best circumstantial, to Cutter they are evidence of a much greater conspiracy, or at least an opportunity to make money � we�re not sure which yet � and it�s not long until he�s pressuring Bone to come in on a plan he�s hatched with Valerie to blackmail Cord, then turn him in to the cops regardless of what he does.

Bone tells Cutter the scheme is crazy and he should be careful. Cutter replies it is Bone who should be careful, as he is the only witness to the crime, a fact that�s been conveniently splashed across the front page of the local newspaper.

Cord is one of the those guys who are a staple of hard boiled noir; the tough as nails businessman who has dragged himself up by his bootstraps, an ex-wildcatter who made a fortune in the oil business. His power and liking of casual violence � in this case directed at young female hitchhikers � are matched only by the impunity with which he gets away with things. The kind of man you don�t want to mess with.

Bone eventually agrees to deliver the blackmail letter. We see him walking into Cord�s anonymous Los Angeles corporate office while Cutter and Valerie wait in the car. Only later does he admit he was only bluffing and never intended to deliver anything.

While Bone returns to Santa Barbara, Cutter remains to follow through his plot, ringing Bone to gloat he�s dropped off the blackmail letter. Meanwhile, Bone sleeps with Mo then slinks off into the night, only finding out next morning that their house has been burnt to the ground with Mo inside it.

Standing amid the smoking ruins, an image that strongly evokes Vietnam, Cutter is in no doubt who the culprit is. Putting aside their grief and anger at each other, he and Bone team up to confront Cord at a party at his mansion.

They�re a sight, Bone dressed as a chauffer ferrying a formerly attired Cutter armed with a pistol in the backseat of a limo. The act gets them past the front gate muscle and eventually into Cord�s house for the film�s bleak ending.

With its ambiguous plot, minimal action and lack of (then) name stars, it�s a wonder Cutter�s Way ever got a release. The director, Ivan Passer was a virtual unknown, as was Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, who shaped the screenplay from the 1976 novel Cutter and Bone by cult author Newton Thornburg. The film bombed at release. The studio only persevered with it following a persistent campaign by a number of film critics.

Bridges plays Bone as a dissolute lounge lizard. His character and Lisa Eichhorn�s sultry booze drenched Mo dance around each other for most of the film, repelling and attracting each other in equal parts. �I don�t like you when you�re stoned,� says Bone. �Hey Rich,� she replies without hesitation, �I don�t like you when I�m straight.�

But it�s the underrated John Heard (remember him as the washed cop in the Sopranos?) that steals every scene he is in. Cutter is a tragic figure one moment, a self-pitying bigot who is more than happy to use Vietnam as an excuse for his behaviour, the next. After deliberately trashing the neighbour�s car on a drunken spree, he goes inside his house to put only his military duffle coat so he can play the wounded veteran routine when the cops arrive.

But although he�s prepared to play the Vietnam card when convenient, the injustice of his experience is not lost on him. In response to Bone�s questioning about why he�s so keen to pin the murder on Cord, Cutter replies, �Because he�s responsible�, if not for the death of the girl, then for the war. �Because it�s never his arse on the line. Never. It�s always somebody else�s.�

A key theme in Thornburg�s books is retribution for the young who fall prey to the dangerous and amoral lure of post-Summer of Love California. Another of his books, To Die in California, centres on a cattle farmer from Illinois who sets out to discover how his son died in California, the only witnesses to the boy�s apparent suicide and a fixer for an ambitious political fixer and a rich but idle woman.

Cutter�s Way portrays a corrupt and paranoid world, where government, big corporations and the political elite are responsible for much of society�s wrongs, whether it is dropping napalm on peasant villages or killing a 17-year old girl, and justice is at best pyrrhic.

As he aims a pistol at Cord in the very final scene of the film, Bone says, �It was you.�

Cord just smiles, puts on his sunglasses and says, �What if it were?�