30 More Days Of Noir #12: No Man’s Woman (dir by Franklin Adreon)

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1955 film tells the story of a murder.

When we first meet Carolyn Elleson Grant (Marie Windsor), she refuses to give her husband, Harlow Grant (John Archer) a divorce, despite the fact that they’ve been separated for several years and Harlow now wants to marry Louise Nelson (Nancy Gates) and Carolyn is now involved with an art critic named Wayne Vincent (Patrick Knowles). Carolyn only married Harlow for his money and, while she has other rich lovers, she just enjoys making Harlow’s life as difficult as possible. It’s hard to blame her because Harlow is kind of whiny.

However, Carolyn has grown bored with Wayne Vincent and she’s now decided that she would rather get involved with Dick Sawyer (Richard Crane), who is rich and owns a boat. However, Dick is engaged to Carolyn’s personal assistant, Betty (Jill Jarmyn). Carolyn thinks it would be perfectly amusing to not only seduce Dick but to also destroy Betty’s happiness.

Why?

As one character put it, Carolyn is “a witch!”

(Someone then adds that Carolyn is a word that “rhymes” with witch. They don’t actually say the word because this film was made in 1955 but still….)

With Carolyn casually trying to destroy everyone’s lives and happiness, is it really a shock when some unseen person shows up at her art studio late at night and shoots her?

With Carolyn dead, it falls to Detectives Colton (Louis Jean Heydt) and Wells (John Gallaudet) to figure out the identity of the murder. They immediately suspect that it had to have been Harlow Grant. Not only does he have the motive and the opportunity but his name is Harlow Grant and I defy you to find anyone named Harlow Grant who hasn’t subsequently turned out to be involved in something shady. Harlow, however, insists that he’s innocent and the investigation is about to get a lot more complicated….

Well, okay, maybe not a lot more complicated. To be honest, it’s really not that difficult to figure out who the murderer actually is No Man’s Woman but that’s okay. The investigation itself only takes the last third of this 70-minute film. No Man’s Woman is a like a low-budget version of Gosford Park. The murder is less important than all of the drama surrounding it.

And make no mistake, there’s a lot of drama! This is a fun movie, specifically because Carolyn is such a wonderfully evil character and Marie Windsor has so much fun playing her. Carolyn doesn’t really have any deep motivation for why she does the terrible things that she does. She just does them because she can and she believes that she can get away with it. A good deal of the film’s entertainment comes from just seeing how bad Carolyn can be. In fact, you’re a bit disappointed when she’s murdered because Carolyn is the most enjoyable character in the movie. She’s someone who is literally willing to do and say anything and she makes an apologies for her actions. You wouldn’t necessarily want to work with her but she’s fun to watch.

The rest of the cast is adequate. John Archer and Nancy Gates are a bit on the dull side as the “good” characters but I liked the performances of the other suspects. Richard Crane and Jill Jarmyn, in particular, are memorable as Dick and Betty. I loved how going out on someone’s boat was apparently the height of decadence in 1955.

No Man’s Woman is an entertaining mix of noir and soap opera. Find it on Prime!

30 More Days of Noir: The Killer Is Loose (dir by Budd Boetticher)

Posted on November 4, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Film noir comes to the suburbs!

The Killer is Loose opens with the robbery of a savings and loan. At first, it seems like meek bank teller Leon Poole (Wendell Corey) behaved heroically and kept the robbery from being far worse than it could have been. How meek is Leon Poole? He’s so meek that his nickname has always been Foggy. People have always made fun of him because of his glasses and his bad eyesight. Everyone assumes that Poole is just one of those quiet people who is destined to spend his entire life in obscurity.

However, the police soon discover that Leon Poole is not the hero that everyone thinks that he is. Instead, he was involved in the robbery! When Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten) leads a group of cops over to Poole’s house to arrest the bank teller, Poole’s wife is accidentally shot and killed. At the subsequent trial, Poole swears that he’ll get vengeance. And then he’s promptly sent off to prison.

Jump forward three years. Leon Poole is still in prison. He’s still deceptively meek. He still wears glasses. Everyone still assumes that he’s harmless. Of course, that’s what Poole wants them to believe. He’s still obsessed with getting his vengeance. Meanwhile, Detective Wagner and his wife, Lila (Rhonda Fleming), are living in the suburbs and have a somewhat strained marriage. Lila wants Wagner to find a less dangerous and less stressful job. Wagner wants to keep busting crooks.

When Poole see a chance to escape from prison, he does so. That’s not really a shock because even the quietest of people are probably going to take advantage of the chance to escape from prison. What is a shock is that Poole ruthlessly murders a guard while making his escape. He then kills a truck driver and steal the vehicle. He then tracks down his old army sergeant and guns him down while the man’s wife watches. Always watch out for the quiet ones, as they say.

Now, Poole has just one more target. He wants to finish his revenge by killing Lila Wagner.

The Killer is Loose is a tough and, considering the time that it was made, brutal film noir. (Seriously, the scene where Poole kills his former sergeant really took me by surprise.) While both Rhonda Fleming and Joseph Cotten give good performances in their roles, it’s Wendell Corey who really steals the film. Corey plays Poole not as an outright villain but instead as a man who has been driven mad by years and years of taunts. After spend his entire life being told that he was a loser, Poole finally decided to do something for himself and, as a result, his wife ended up getting killed by the police. Now that Poole’s managed to escape from prison, he’s willing to do anything just as long as he can get his final revenge. Corey plays Poole with a smoldering resentment and the performance feels very real. (If the film were made today, it’s easy to imagine that Poole would be an anonymous twitter troll, going through life with a smile on his face while unleashing his anger online.) It brings a very real spark and feeling of danger to a film that would otherwise just be a standard crime film.

The Killer Is Loose also makes good use of its suburban setting, suggesting that both Fleming and Cotten have allowed themselves to get complacent with their life away from the obvious dangers of the big city. You can buy a new house, the film seems to be saying, but you can’t escape the past.

Horror on TV: The Veil Episode 8 “Summer Heat” (dir by George Waggner)

Posted on October 11, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Veil.…

There’s been a murder! Or has there? Edward Paige (Henry Bartell) swears that he saw someone murdered in a nearby apartment but, when the police investigate, they discover that the apartment appears to be totally deserted. Still convinced that he saw something, Edward is sent for a psychiatric evaluation from Dr. Mason (Boris Karloff, playing a sympathetic role for once). Dr. Mason says that Edward’s not making it up. Edward swears that he saw something. But what?

This is a pretty good episode. Think of it as being Rear Window with an extra twist. Boris Karloff hosts as well as co-stars.

Enjoy!

30 Days of Noir #27: Parole, Inc. (dir by Alfred Zeisler)

Posted on November 27, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1948 film noir, Parole, Inc., begins with a lengthy opening crawl, informing the viewer that this film — though fictional — deals with a real-world problem.

Apparently, too many people are getting out of prison!

That’s right! The opening crawl informs us that half of all crimes are committed by people who have already served time in prison. Apparently, there would be less crime if we just never released people from prison but, unfortunately, state parole boards are way too quick to let some criminals out early. Is it because the members of the board truly believe that these offenders have been rehabilitated in prison? Or is it because they’ve been bribed?

That’s what FBI Agent Richard Hendricks (Michael O’Shea) is going to find out!

Now, we already kind of know what he’s going to discover and what’s going to happen to him as a result because, for some reason, the film opens with Hendricks in a hospital bed, dictating the events of his latest case. The rest of the film is largely an extended flashback, occasionally interrupted by a shot of Hendricks recovering from his injuries. I’m not sure why the filmmakers decided that this would be a good format to go with. It basically robs the story of any suspense. Whenever a gangster says that he’s going to kill Hendricks, the declaration doesn’t carry any weight because we know that Hendricks is alive and that he managed to solve the case.

Anyway, in the flashback, Richard is working directly for the governor of California. The governor is worried that the state parole board is accepting bribes so Richard goes undercover as an ex-con who wants to buy a parole for a friend of his who is still in jail. As a part of his assignment, Richard befriends a recently paroled criminal named Harry Palmer (Charles Bradstreet). It turns out that, for a criminal, Harry isn’t that bad of a guy. He may still have underworld connections but, for the most part, Harry seems like he could easily go straight. Of course, that doesn’t make much difference to the nefarious crows that Harry runs around with and Harry ends up getting gunned down about halfway through the film. Richard seems to be more annoyed over the inconvenience of Harry dying than anything else. Now, he’s going to have to do all sorts of extra work!

Though Michael O’Shea has just enough screen presence to be an acceptable hero, the main reason to see the film is for Turhan Bey and Evelyn Ankers. Bey plays the crooked attorney who is in charge of the parole buying ring. Evelyn Ankers play the wonderfully named JoJo Dumont, who owns the bar out of which the gangsters operate. These two actors both throw themselves into their roles, bringing just the right amount of B-movie grit to their characters. Horror fans may recognize Evelyn Ankers from her performance as Lon Chaney Jr.’s girlfriend in The Wolf Man. Ankers appeared in several classic Universal horror films and was menaced by everyone from Dracula to Frankenstein’s Monster to the Invisible Man. Turhan Bey also appeared in his share of horror films, even co-starring with Evelyn Ankers in The Mad Ghoul.

Parole, Inc is a largely forgettable movie but worth seeing if you’re a fan of Universal horror and you’re interested in seeing Turhan Bey and Evelyn Ankers in a change-of-pace film.

Lisa Watches An Oscar Nominee: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (dir by George Roy Hill)

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Should I start this post by ticking everyone off or should I start out by reviewing the 1969 best picture nominee Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid?

Let’s do the review first. I recently watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when it aired as a part of TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar. This was actually my third time to see the film on TCM. And, as I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the third time, I was shocked to discover how much I had forgotten about the film.

Don’t get me wrong. I remembered that it was a western and that it starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford as real-life outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remembered that it opened and ended with sepia-toned sequences that suggested that Butch and Sundance represented the last gasp of the old west. I remembered that Butch won a fight by kicking a man in the balls. I also remembered that they robbed the same train twice and, the second time, they accidentally used too much dynamite. I remembered that, for some reason, Butch spent a lot of time riding around on a bicycle. I remembered that Butch and Sundance ended up getting chased by a mysterious posse. I remembered that Sundance could not swim. And I remembered that the film eventually ended on a tragic note in South America…

And I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “It sounds like you remembered the whole movie, Lisa!”

No, actually I did not. The thing with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is that the scenes that work are so memorable that it’s easy to forget that there’s also a lot of scenes that aren’t as memorable. These are the scenes where the film drags and you’re thankful that Paul Newman and Robert Redford were cast as Butch and Sundance, because their charisma helps you overlook a lot of scenes that are either too heavy-handed or which drag on for too long. You’re especially thankful for Newman, who plays every scene with a twinkle in his wonderful blue eyes and who is such a lively presence that it makes up for the fact that Redford’s performance occasionally crosses over from being stoic to wooden. It can be argued that there’s no logical reason for a western to feature an outlaw riding around on a bicycle while Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head plays on the soundtrack but Paul Newman’s so much fun to watch that you can forgive the film.

Newman and Redford both have so much chemistry that they’re always a joy to watch. And really, that’s the whole appeal of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the chance to watch two iconic actors have fun playing opposite each other. Even though Katharine Ross appears as their shared romantic interest, the film’s love story is ultimately between Butch and Sundance (and, by extension, Newman and Redford). You can find countless reviews that will give all the credit for the film’s appeal to William Goldman’s screenplay. (You can also find countless self-satisfied essays by William Goldman where he does the exact same thing.) But, honestly, the film’s screenplay is nothing special. This film works because of good, old-fashioned star power.

Now, for the part that’ll probably tick everyone off (heh heh), I think that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is actually a pretty good pick for a future remake. All you have to do is pick the right actors for Butch and Sundance. I’m thinking Chris Pratt as Butch and Chris Evans as Sundance…

Oh, c’mon! It’ll be great!