Book Review: NOIR by Christopher Moore (William Morrow 2018)

Posted on June 22, 2018 by gary loggins

In between everything else I do, I read about a book a week, mainly mystery fiction. Current favorites include James Lee Burke, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Janet Evanovich, and John Sandford, all with their own unique styles, and all masters of the genre. But when I need a good laugh, I pick up Christopher Moore. I first became aware of Moore’s work with his brilliant 2002 novel LAMB, OR THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BIFF, CHRIST’S CHILDHOOD PAL, an irreverent satire narrated by Jesus’s good buddy Biff that’s as outrageous as it sounds, and sinfully funny to boot.

Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in “Out of the Past” (RKO 1947) have nothing on Sammy and The Cheese!

This time around, Moore goes from taking on the Scriptures to the hard-boiled world of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The novel is set in 1947 San Francisco, a very good year for noir

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Revisiting an Old Fiend: THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK

Posted on June 26, 2015 by gary loggins

Recently I switched from cable to DirecTV. As part of my package, I’ve officially joined the DVR generation. This is like being in heaven for an old movie buff like myself. Now I can record films of interest no matter what time they’re on and enjoy them at my leisure. Especially those older black & white gems that air mainly in the wee-wee hours. I can catch up with some classics I’ve only read about over the years but never had the opportunity to view, and those I only have vague memories of watching decades ago on snowy looking UHF channels.

THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK falls into the latter category. This 1941 Columbia film was directed by the criminally underrated Frenchman Robert Florey and stars everybody’s favorite madman Peter Lorre. The movie’s a very early example of 40s film noir, as was another Lorre vehicle, 1940’s STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR.

Lorre plays Janos Szabo, a newly arrived Hungarian immigrant watchmaker, come to America to find work and live the American dream. He’s befriended by police Lt. O’Hara (Don Beddoe), who buys the naïve newcomer a five dollar lunch and directs him to the Excelsior Palace, a low rent hotel. When another border’s negligence causes the joint to go up in flames, Janos is trapped inside, and suffers a horrible disfigurement.

O’Hara feels responsible for the poor guy’s plight and writes a message on one of his calling cards for Janos to contact him when he’s released from the hospital. Now unable to find work due to his terribly scarred visage, Janos goes to the waterfront, contemplating suicide. He meets up with a petty crook named Dinky, who takes a liking to Janos. Dinky has a safe job lined up but falls ill, and asks Janos to take his place. The Hungarian, good with his hands, takes care of business, When Dinky’s former comrades Benson and Watts show up wanting to know why they weren’t in on the score, the four decide to form a crime gang, with Janos (now nicknamed Johnny) as the ringleader. A crime wave ensues, baffling the police, and putting O’Hara under pressure to end the larcenous spree quickly as possible.

Janos wants the illicit dough so he can have plastic surgery and restore his features. A rubber mask is made from his passport photo for him to wear until the doctor returns. When the doc (an uncredited cameo by Frank Reicher, KING KONG’s Captain Englehorn) finally does see Janos, he informs him that the facial nerves have suffered too much damage, and it would take fifteen years before any progress could be made!

Disheartened, Janos leaves the doctor’s office, where he (literally) bumps into Helen Williams. Helen is blind, but she can sense the goodness still inside the scarred master criminal. Eventually, Janos comes clean to her about his face, but not his illegal activities. Helen is played by the beautiful Evelyn Keyes, best known as Scarlet O’Hara’s Younger Sister (the name of her autobiography) in GONE WITH THE WIND.

Now in love with Helen, and with plenty of money stashed away, Janos decides to leave his life of crime behind and settle down in the country. This doesn’t sit well with his former cronies, especially Jeff, the gang’s new leader. When the cop’s calling card (remember?) is found in Janos’s old desk, they fear their former boss has turned stool pigeon. The gang beats and tortures Dinky, the only one who knows Janos’s whereabouts. Dinky spills the beans, and Jeff and company pay a visit to Janos and his new bride. While Jeff delivers a warning, the gang plants a bomb in his car, connected to the radio. Dinky gets dumped to the side of the road, badly beaten and shot, but manages to get to a phone and warn Janos. But it’s too late. While Helen’s unpacking the car, she wants to hear some music, turns on the radio, and KA-BOOM! She sadly dies in Janos’s arms.

Dinky’s still alive though, and tells Janos the gang has chartered a plane and are going on the lam. They take to the air and head west, unaware that Janos has ambushed the pilot and is flying the plane. He lands them smack in the middle of the Arizona desert and tells them he’s stranding them all there to die a slow, painful death. Soon after, O’Hara gets a hot tip (pun intended!)and flies west to discover a gruesome tableau. The gang members are all dead, including Janos, who’s been tied to the plane’s wing. O’Hara finds an explanation note in his little friend’s pocket, along with the five bucks for the lunch O’Hara bought him long ago.

Lorre is superb as a man trapped in circumstances beyond his control, showing a wider range of emotion beyond his standard pop-eyed psychopath roles. Keyes is also good as the doomed Helen, proving she could’ve been a much bigger star with better roles. FACE BEHIND THE MASK features plenty of familiar faces from the Mighty Columbia Arts Players brigade (Beddoe, George E Stone, Cy Schindell, John Tyrell, George McKay). The film’s a brisk 75 minutes of entertainment for lovers of 40s cinema in general, and Lorre in particular. The name Janos, by the way, was obviously inspired from the Roman god Janus, always depicted with two faces!

I’m glad I got to rewatch this movie and enjoy it without all that UHF snow.. I’ve got plenty more lined up in the DVR, and look forward to sharing my impressions of them with you, dear reader. So get that popcorn ready and let’s go to the show!

Review: 100 Bullets Vol. 1 – First Shot, Last Call

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Arleigh

I missed out on the initial release for 100 Bullets, but I’ve since rectified that problem.

Brian Azzarrello’s 100 Bullets continues the long line of excellent mature comic titles from DC Comic’s Vertigo line. Azzarrello’s hardboiled, crime-thriller noir series brings to mind classic detective-noir works by Hammett, Spillane and Chandler. It’s a more complex continuation of the hyper-noir series Frank Miller began with his Sin City series. I’ve heard people say that this series was better than Sin City and to some respect it was. The stories in each issue contained in this first volume (issues 1 through 5) were abit more complex in nature and execution than Miller’s more simple noir tales. The five stories in this collected volume also laid the basic groundwork for what’ll turn out to be one long-running series lasting exactly 100-issues. Where Sin City‘s simplicity in its storytelling and artwork lay its strength, it’s in the complexities in the tales and the detailed, but economical artwork that 100 Bullets shined through.

In First Shot, Last Call we’re introduced to the gamemaster of the tale: Agent Graves. Looking like an ever-present government agent who has seen all that life has thrown at him and ready for more, Agent Graves picks a recently paroled Latino lass by the name of Dizzy Cordova with a proposition. He offers Dizzy an attache case with a gun and 100 bullets that’re untraceable and definite proof that certain individuals caused her heartache and grief that has ruined her life. He only offers her the attache case, its content and the proof within. The choice is Dizzy’s to make on what she should do with what’s offered her. This set-up and premise is the beauty of 100 Bullets. The story’s basically a morality tale of choices offered to the characters. Will they use the offer to exact vengeance and get away with it scott-free, or will they refuse the offer and live on with their life. The choice of revenge really doesn’t bring back lost time and loved ones and only feeds the need for retribution. Agent Graves doesn’t really force Dizzy’s hand, but a supporting character knowledgable of the offer does — for his own agenda not yet known — prods, pushes and guides her to picking the more primal choice. Dizzy’s choice in the end was both understandable and in the end inevitable.

The second story arc deals with Lee Dolan who also has had his life turned upside-down by people unknown to him. His life and family taken away by the stink of a child pornography accusation in the past. Agent Graves makes him the same offer of the attache case and its untraceable 100 bullets. Dolan’s reaction to this offer is different from that of Dizzy’s, but in the end his ultimate choice doesn’t give him the same resolution and new life path that Dizzy made. It’s a tribute to Azzarrello’s great writing that the decision both Dizzy Cordova and Lee Dolan made were understandable when taken into context of their personalities and yearning to fix the problem that led them to their current state in their lives.

To complement Azzarrello’s words perfectly were Eduardo Risso’s artwork. It would be a misnomer to say that Risso’s art style was minimalist like those of Frank Miller’s woodcut-engraving style for Sin City or Mike Mignola’s chiasroscuro-style for his Hellboy series. There’s a sense of the cinematic in Risso’s work. The scenes were always drawn with a mind for action even when it’s just people standing around. Risso has quite the filmmaker’s eye in how he’s drawn 100 Bullets which just adds to its noirish feel. The characters and environment were drawn not to scale and real-world proportion, but just enough not to look cartoonish. I would agree that there’s an abundance for cleavage on the women drawn, but Risso doesn’t do it gratuitously. Instead he uses this detail to showcase the sexuality of the strong female characters. It paints the female characters like Dizzy Cordova and Megan Dietrich with a sense of both strength and sensuality without pandering to the teenage boy demographic. Plus, he gives these ladies their own personality and character with how he draws them. Dizzy truly has the Latina sensual curves while Megan has the icy-cold Aryan beauty that serves her well.

100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call was a great discovery and a wonderful beginning to a very mature, intelligent and hardhitting comic series. Congratulations must got to its creator Brian Azzarrello for writing such great characters and memorable stories. I can’t forget the work of his artist and partner-in-crime, Eduardo Risso. Risso’s artwork has stamped themselves in my mind as the only way to see 100 Bullets in. Both Azzarrello and Risso complement each other well and their continued collaboration right up to the end of the series helped make this series one of the best of the past decade.

10 Favorite Comic Books of the Past Decade

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Arleigh

The first decade of the new millenium found me in a weird place when it came to one of my big hobbies after high school. From 1989 all the way through the 90’s I was a major comic book reader and collector. I would say that I wouldn’t deny the charge that I might have helped the so-called “comic book speculator era” rise to the forefront of the hobby. Artists like Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Todd McFarlane were like rock stars in that era and their titles would fly off the shelves the moment they came out. I and others would buy multiple copies, carefully board and bagged them (but also read them) and wait for their price to go up.

Some titles did go up in price and were sold for a profit thus feeding the notion that I could make a lot of money off of these comic books. I was one of the early adopters of the independent titles which really fed the speculator market. First there was buying up all the early Evil Ernie issues before most of the public got wind of just how awesome (and limited their printing were) then doing the same for William Tucci’s Shi title which I must say really defined a speculator’s dream title. It had buzz to it due to the bad girl art, the story was not bad and had an exotic taste to it and, best of all, the printing on the title character’s first appearance was practically non-existent.

By the time the speculator’s market finally burst it’s bubble and dragged the comic book industry down with it I was pretty much burnt-out on comic books. I still read them and bought the titles whcih caught my eye, but the days of buying every issue of most every title from Marvel/DC/Image were done with. I even stopped buying and reading them in the beginning of the 2000’s. The industry was in a creative rut in the early years of the new decade. While superhero titles were floundering and publishers (small and medium ones) were declaring bankruptcy and selling off properties to the highest bidder a curious thing happened. I got back into comic books and it wasn’t the hero titles which drew me back in but the mature, independent titles from Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image and small-indie publishers.

This was a very good thing since I missed having the books in my hands. I wasn’t buying them now to collect but to read. I still handled them with kid gloves but I wasn’t worried about whether they would turn me a profit anymore. So, for most of the decade I was an indie-fool who pretty much avoided most the titles from Marvel/DC. While I still read some titles from the two main comic book houses it wasn’t on the same level pre-2000’s.

Below is the list of the 10 titles that were my favorite of the decade. Some were considered the best of the decade and some just my favorite because they spoke to me as a reader. This time they will be in order of importance unlike my previous Best/Fave lists.

10. Hellboy by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse Comics)