30 More Days of Noir | Through the Shattered Lens

1948’s Blonde Ice tells the story of Claire Cummings (Leslie Brooks), the society columnist for a San Francisco newspaper. Almost every man that Claire meets falls in love with her.

Les Burns (Robert Paige), the paper’s cynical sports reporter? Les is so in love with Claire that he keeps getting involved with her despite the fact that she cheats on him with almost every man that she meets.

Al Herrick (James Griffith)? Yep, he’s still in love with her too.

Carl Hanneman (John Holland), one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco? Carl is so in love with Claire that he’s willing to marry her even after he catches her kissing Les on the day of the wedding!

Congressional candidate Stanley Mason (Michael Whalen)? He’s so in love with Claire that he’s willing to sacrifice his political career just to be with her.

How about Blackie Talon (Russ Vincent), the pilot who witnesses Claire doing some things that she probably wouldn’t want the world to know about? Well, Blackie never gets around to declaring his love for Claire but his obsession with blackmailing her is probably just his way of dealing with the massive crush that he has on her.

The only person who doesn’t appear to be in love with Claire is Dr. Kippinger (David Leonard), a psychiatrist who immediately picks up on the fact that Claire is cold and manipulative. There’s a reason why Les refers to her as being …. can you guess? …. “Blonde Ice!”

Of course, even with all of these men falling in love with her, no one loves Claire as much as Claire loves herself. Claire is a narcissist and a sociopath and she has no problem killing one lover and framing another for the crime. In fact, it’s something that she attempts to do several times over the course of Blonde Ice. Claire, it has to be said, is pretty clever about it too. Her natural ability to manipulate, combined with her total lack of empathy for anyone but herself, makes Claire a dangerous character.

Blonde Ice is somewhat obscure as noirs go. It was clearly a poverty row production, with only a 74-minute running time and a cast largely made up of obscure contract players. And yet, Blonde Ice is a personal favorite of mine, largely because of the ferocious performance of Leslie Brooks. Brooks rips into the role of the femme fatale, delivering her cynical lines with aplomb and murdering anyone who gets in her way. Considering that this film was made in 1948, I was actually a bit shocked at just how high the body count climbed in just an hour and a few minutes. Claire is basically willing to kill anyone and the film often seems to take a perverse delight in showing how easily she can convince others of her innocence. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is that Claire attempt to frame the same man for not one but two murders and, even after all that, he still doesn’t seem to be emotionally capable of telling her to get out of his life. In a world of weak men, Claire comes in, takes control, and offers up no apologies.

Obscure though the film may be, Blonde Ice is an enjoyable noir and can be found on YouTube.

Welcome to Noirvember!

Yeah, yeah, I know. That sounds kinda silly, doesn’t it? However, November is traditionally the month that classic film bloggers tend to concentrate on writing about film noir. It provides a bit of grit and cynicism in between the horror fun of October and the holiday schmaltz of December.

I have to admit that I’m a little bit torn when it comes to taking part in Noirvember. On the one hand, I love a good film noir and there’s quite a few obscure and underrated ones available on YouTube right now. On the other hand, as a natural-born contrarian, I don’t like the idea of hopping on any bandwagons.

In the end, my love of film noir won out. So, welcome to my first entry in 30 More Days of Noir.

The 1950 film, Bunco Squad, tells the story of Tony Weldon (Ricardo Cortez), a con man who specializes in using a phony psychic routine to swindle rich people out of their money. He runs a fake enlightenment center and he claims that he can speak to the dead. His latest target is the wealthy Jessica Royce (Elisabeth Risdon). After he finds out that her son was killed during the invasion of Normandy, he and his associates go out of their way to trick her into believing that Tony can contact her son and that her son wants her to leave all of her money to Tony’s organization. It’s actually kind of interesting watching as Tony and his gang manage to track down information about Jessica and her son, asking the most mundane of questions to find out things that Jessica believes only her son would know. Watching Tony operate, I was reminded of those documentaries and news reports that you see about phony faith healers and other people who claim they can speak to the dead but who actually just go on very vague fishing expeditions. (“I’m sensing something about the letter L. Does that mean anything to you?”)

Tony is not just a con artist. He’s also a murderer, one who specializes in cutting brake lines on cars. If you try to expose Tony, you’re probably going to end up driving off of a cliff. I guess you can get away with that when you’re a con artist in California. Myself, I live in North Texas where the land is totally flat. Someone could cut my brake lines and I would probably just keep going forward until I eventually ran out of gas. Once that happened, someone would probably pull over and offer to give me a lift to the nearest gas station. That’s one reason why someone like Tony Weldon could never pull off any of his crimes in my home state.

Fortunately, the detective of the LAPD’s Bunco Squad know what Tony’s doing. The only problem is that they have to get some proof that Tony is swindling Ms. Royce and they have to manage to do it before Tony gets a chance to tamper with all of their brakes. Leading the Bunco Squad is Steve Johnson (Robert Sterling) and you better believe that there’s no way someone named Steve Johnson is going to be anything other than honest and upright. Working with a real-life magician named Dante, Johnson attempts to expose all of Tony’s tricks.

It’s probably open for debate whether or not Bunco Squad is a true noir. On the one hand, Tony and his schemes are very noirish. On the other hand, Steve and the members of the Bunco Squad are so upright that there’s none of the ambiguous morality that you find in the best film noirs. I guess I would call this a half-noir.

The best thing about Bunco Squad is that it’s only 67 minutes long, which is all the time that it needs to tell a compact and occasionally interesting story. There’s no excessive padding to try to force the story out to an unwieldy 90 minutes. Instead, Bunco Squad jumps right into its story and it doesn’t let up until things come to an end. The other good thing about Bunco Squad is that you’ve got Ricardo Cortez, giving a charmingly evil performance as Tony Weldon. The film’s heroes are a pretty dull bunch but Cortez brings a nice charge of danger to the proceedings.

Bunco Squad is an obscure film but it moves quickly and the story is interesting enough to hold your attention for an hour. It can be found on YouTube.