I realize that LiveJournal is ghost-town now, that's it's become nothing but a handy delivery system to send content to Twitter and Facebook. But even though I don't get very many comments from actual humans on LJ anymore, the number of spam comments has gone through the roof in the past few months. I screen, so none of that junk gets through to readers (all three of them) but it's still annoying as hell.

So two questions for the hive mind. First, are other LJ users experiencing the same recent uptick in spam action or is it just me? Second, is it finally time to move on from LJ. Maybe even rethink this whole long-form blogging concept?

Discuss...

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be participating in a library event sponsored by the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, along with fellow authors Morgan St. James, Michael Mallory, Gary Phillips , and M.M. Gornell.

"Writing For the Thrill of It"

Saturday, April 23rd, 3:00 pm
Palms-Rancho Park Library
Ray Bradbury Room, Second Floor.

More info here.

Last night was the last night. That is to say, the last night of Noir City Hollywood. The big kiss off. The end of the line. In a way, I wish they would have ended the run with the manly bang of CRY TOUGH, but instead we ended with a much more girly whimper. A melodramatic Gothic Noir double, neither of which was really Noir at all.

First, GASLIGHT.



Ingrid Bergman plays a sweet young singer who falls for dastardly pianist Charles Boyer. Suave, slippery Boyer is clearly up to no good from frame one. He marries our heroine, moves her back into the house where her beloved aunt was strangled, takes total control over every aspect of her life and tries to make her think she’s going mad.

This a beautifully shot, classy film full of intriguing plot twists and great character actors, like barely legal Angela Lansbury as the saucy maid and Dame May Whitty as the nosy, mystery reading neighbor. (Come to think of it, this is the second film this year that features a female mystery reader, the first being A WOMAN’S SECRET.) It’s got Bergman in a corset and a great bondage scene. I love that Bergman, after being helpless through the whole film, gets tough with Boyer in the final reel. But GASLIGHT isn’t really my kind of flick. Just like CRY TOUGH isn’t a good movie, but I loved it, GASLIGHT is a very good movie, but left me cold.

Truth be told, I’m not a big fan of the whole innocent-woman-being-driven-mad story archetype. I think part of the reason it doesn’t resonate for me comes from my own 21st century modern feminist upbringing. I imagine that many more women from earlier decades must have felt voiceless and powerless in their daily lives. Housewives who had to take whatever their husband dished out without complaint. Single women who were afraid to report rape or other abuse because they thought no one would believe them, that the man’s word would be taken over theirs. Seen from that perspective, this kind of story makes perfect sense.

And of course, we were in for more of the same with the second feature, MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS. But between the two films, I found the dirt-cheap and balls out over-the-top JULIA ROSS infinitely more enjoyable.



The plot of this film is so batshit crazy that I almost don’t want to give anything away. The best part for me was going in knowing absolutely nothing about it, so if you want to do the same, you’d better skip the next two paragraphs.

SPOILERS (sort of…)

Nina Foch plays Julia, an ordinary young girl trying to make it on her own in London. Her sweetheart goes off to marry another woman and, despondent, she applies for a job as live in secretary to an older woman (Dame May Whitty again.) The woman is specifically looking for a girl with no family or boyfriends, so that should have been a tip off right there. Just as Julia’s about to leave for the new job, she runs into her ex, who didn’t get married after all. He tells her still loves her, and they make a date for the next night. That’s where the plot takes a left turn at Albuquerque.

Her new employer slips her a mickey and when she wakes up she’s in a secluded sea-side mansion dressed in someone else’s monogrammed nightgown. Of course, she’s upset that she missed her date, but she’s even more upset when she realizes that her “employer,” the woman’s creepy, possibly homicidal son (played with delirious, scenery-chewing abandon by scar-faced George MacReady) and various servants are all acting as if she’s a completely different person, MacReady’s wife. When she demands to be set free or tries to tell them who she really is, they just soothe her and tell her not to tire herself with such crazy talk. Soon she finds out what they really have planned for her, and has to find a way to get word to her boyfriend in London or escape on her own before it’s too late.

This movie was a hoot from start to finish. Even though GASLIGHT is a much better film, I found that JULIA ROSS was a lot more fun. Neither one is a movie I would have picked if the choice were up to me, but in the end, I’m glad I saw them both.

So that’s it for the 13th annual Film Noir Festival, Faustketeers. Now, it’s back to the pulp mines for your plucky girl reporter.

CRY TOUGH may be my favorite film this year. Not because it’s a work of cinematic genius or anything like that. Just because it hits all my sweet spots and then some. Nymphomania! Judo! Stag films! Gas masks and stingy brim hats! And this exchange: “What’s shakin’?” “The bacon. But this bacon is taken.”



Gorgeous young John Saxon plays a Puerto Rican ex-con who comes home to his old New York neighborhood and tries to go straight, but winds up seduced back into a life of crime. He falls for a hot Cuban nymphomaniac (Linda Cristal) who hates the idea of marriage and doesn’t want to be tied down to just one man. (My kinda gal!) After pulling a few violent jobs for a slippery, effeminate crime boss, he’s poised to take over the dirty business, but all he really wants is his disapproving father’s love and acceptance. Dad’s declaration that Saxon is dead to him sends the kid into a self-destructive downward spiral. No sappy, happily-ever-after in this one.

It’s set in my old hood, in the “teeming tenements” of New York City during the hottest part of the sweltering summer. I loved the steamy rooftop love scene on what we used to call “tar beach.” I loved the fact that the crooks had no guns, only switchblades. I loved the death-curse of the bloody chicken head. I loved the weird, homoerotic scene where Saxon confronts the naked crime boss in the bathtub. I loved all the meaty Latina dancers in tight skirts. In short, I loved this movie. It was dirt cheap, shot for peanuts and a bit heavy handed in its attempt to be socially relevant but that didn’t stop me from loving every minute of it.

John Saxon was there in person to introduce the film. I had no idea that he had been a model for pulp covers and magazines as a teenager. I also dug his story about coming to Hollywood from Brooklyn and meeting fellow New Yorker Tony Curtis, who told him “Don’t let ‘em bug you about your accent. You talk how you wanna talk.”

The second feature was DOWN THREE DARK STREETS.



This documentary-style procedural starred Broderick Crawford as an FBI agent who steps in to investigate three separate but possibly related cases after his partner is murdered. A widow is receiving phone calls from a mystery man who says he'll kill her daughter if she doesn't turn over her late husband’s insurance money. A homicidal gangster is on the loose and his saucy girlfriend is the only one who knows were he’s hiding out. A kid gets mixed up with a gang of car thieves who threaten his blind wife if he doesn’t go along with their racket. Crawford solves the cases, including his partner’s death, using cutting-edge scientific techniques (like semantics!) and his own intuitive ability to see into the inner workings of the criminal mind. CSI, 1954!

Tons of great vintage LA locations, including a climactic scene up at the Hollywood sign. The droning narration might have been a downside to some, but I liked the wordy explanations and all the dated “science.” Not a good film by any stretch but fun to watch. I especially liked the blind girl IDing the bad guy (Claude Akins!) by feeling his cauliflower ear.

There was one funny glitch in this print. As I mentioned yesterday, both these prints are brand spanking new, so new that there was no time to check them out in advance. In fact, there was some worry that the prints might not make it to Hollywood in time for the show. But they did and our viewing was the first time anyone had seen them. I have no idea what the back story was behind these two print or where the negatives came from, but at one point the extortionist gives the widow a note composed of cut out letters an the note is in Italian! Wonder what happened there…?

I’ll be back on Wednesday for the final show in this year’s Noir City series, GASLIGHT and MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS.

A Glenn Ford double bill, with his son Peter as a special guest, signing his book GLENN FORD: A LIFE

This show was packed to the rafters, a sold-out crowd full of famous names and classic stars who came out for this tribute to the brooding, magnetic and dangerously sexy “Man Who Tamed Gilda!” And allegedly knocked her up too, according to the explicit diaries he left behind.

Our first feature was FRAMED.



This film ran neck in neck with BRUTE FORCE and KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE for the most overtly “noirish” offering this year. Everything about FRAMED, from the tough, punchy title to the classic unhappy ending was pitch perfect. Ford’s character starts off fucked from frame one and it all goes down hill from there.

Ford plays a hunky drifter who barrels into town behind the wheel of a truck with no breaks, right into the treacherous arms of a scheming blonde femme fatale, played by Janis Carter. Carter is having an affair with married Barry Sullivan, who coincidentally plays yet another bank employee. But unlike his beleaguered hero in LOOPHOLE, this time he’s the frame-er rather than the frame-ee. He and Carter cook up a scheme to fake his death and make off with the cash he embezzled from the bank. All they need is a body. A man with the same height and build, someone with no friends or family. A man like Ford. But once our femme fatale gets a taste of the man who tamed Gilda, she gets other ideas and throws a monkey wrench (literally) into Sullivan’s plans.

FRAMED was my kind of movie. Nothing new or terribly original, but still a blast from start to finish. Highly recommended.

Between the flicks, host Alan Rode talked with Glenn’s son Peter about his father and his biography. I could have listened to Peter’s facinating and racy stories all night. He sold out of his book last night, so I wasn’t able to score a copy, but after hearing him speak, I’m going to have to hunt one down.

Next up, the quirky MR. SOFT TOUCH



In this one, Ford plays a war hero named “Joe Miracle” (get it?) who comes home to find that gangsters have taken over his nightclub. He steals back the money that he thinks is rightfully his and goes on the lam, hiding out in a shelter for homeless families. He ends up falling for a saintly, partially deaf social worker, played by Evelyn Keyes. Wackiness ensues, and Ford winds up dressed like Santa Claus. No, I’m not kidding.

This film had some noirish elements and a down ending, but it can’t really be classified as pure Film Noir. It has elements of comedy and romance. The dark ending was sweetened and tempered with a pinch of redemption. It even threatened to veer into sappy cute-kid tearjerker territory, but thankfully never really did. Overall, this flick is smart and genuinely funny with a strong, crackling script and a cast of bizarre and memorable secondary characters. Definitely worth watching.

There was some drama over whether or not the newly struck prints of DOWN THREE DARK STREETS and CRY TOUGH were going to make it to Hollywood in time for tonight’s show. Lucky for us, they did, and your plucky ringside reporter will be there, bringing you the blow-by-blow from my usual seat.

A double bill from William “The Tingler” Castle, starting with THE HOUSTON STORY.



Ambitious Gene Barry masterminds a scheme that involves secretly siphoning off other people’s oil and hijacking their equipment. He gets financing from the mob and finds himself in a love triangle with a sexy nightclub singer and an earnest, good-girl waitress. And, because crime doesn’t pay, we get another unhappy ending.

What this movie really needed was a gimmick. Electrified seats. A floating skeleton. A sexy nurse. Because it wasn’t an outright bad movie, just kind of forgettable and it slid right off my brain without a trace. The only details that stuck with me were Barbara Hale’s leopard print bathing suit and the glowing fake city backdrop behind a rooftop confrontation and murder. I’ve decided that I need a window in my office that overlooks that kind of fake night time cityscape, complete with little blinking neon signs that say generic things like “Theater” and “Shoes.”

My big problem with this film is the fact that it was allegedly set in Houston, yet there wasn’t a single person with a southern accent. Not one. It should have been called “THE BURBANK STORY.”

NEW ORLEANS UNCENSORED on the other hand, was a lot more like it. And not just because it featured my time travel boyfriend Mike Mazurki as a thug named “Big Mike.” (!!!)



It stars Arthur Franz (loved him in THE SNIPER) as a straight-shooting ex Navy boxer who gets a job on the docks and finds himself hip-deep in corruption and mixed up with a ruthless gangster and his bombshell girlfriend.

Unlike THE HOUSTON STORY, which could have been anywhere, this one is all about the setting. Castle used real New Orleans longshoremen as extras and cast locals in many of the smaller roles. He shot tons of great street scenes, and not just the usual French Quarter locations either. There’s a scene at Pontchartrain Beach, plus plenty of seedy back alleys and rough industrial areas that you don’t normally see in the Hollywood fantasy version of the Big Easy.

This isn’t a good movie either, but I loved every minute of it. I loved the “expert” who comes on screen at the beginning to explain that in real life, the New Orleans docks are squeaky clean and there is absolutely no corruption like the kind in the movie. I loved the “oscillator” that the hero uses to track the stolen shipment and the huge round antenna on top of the police prowler to pick up the signal. I loved the boxing gym and “Scrappy” the ex-pug with the bum heart. I loved Beverly Garland. I loved the wild fist-fights on the docks. I loved the two guys wrestling on the beach. All this and Big Mike? I’m sold.

Tonight it’s a Glenn Ford double bill with FRAMED and MR. SOFT TOUCH.

I missed the Wednesday night feature, but even the endless construction fuckstickery can’t keep me away for long, so I was back in my usual seat last night for a Robert Ryan double bill. This was one I couldn’t miss.

Some people think of Bogey as the ultimate Film Noir anti-hero, but for me it’s always been Robert Ryan. Even when he plays a sympathetic role, like the washed up boxer in THE SET UP, he brings this tortured complexity to the character, like there’s some unknowable darkness lurking just beneath the surface. When he’s bad, he’s even better. I loved his relentless, vengeful veteran in ACT OF VIOLENCE. And how hot is the scene where trampy Gloria Grahame asks him what it’s like to kill a man in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW? ("He dared me. Like you are now.") Ryan gives unspoken depth to even the most generic characters and hamfisted dialog. I’ll pretty much watch him in anything.

So when I saw that Noir City was showing two Ryan films I’d never seen, I was over the moon. First up, CAUGHT.



Ryan plays a sadistic, controlling millionaire with a bum heart who seduces and marries a sweet department store model (Barbara Bel Geddes) just to prove a point to his shrink. She quickly gets sick of his abuse and runs off to work as a receptionist in a pediatrician’s office. The saintly doc (James Mason) falls for her and complications ensue.

The story is pretty silly but Ryan is dynamite as the psycho husband. However the best part of this one is the end, so people who still haven’t seen this film and don’t want to read spoilers better skip this next paragraph.

SPOILERS!!!




Okay, so the model gets knocked up by the mean husband, who threatens to have her declared an unfit (slutty) mother if she tries to divorce him. Dr Nice Guy still loves her anyway of course, and holds her hand while she’s being rushed to the hospital with “complications.” She’s in shock because she thinks she murdered the hubby (turns out he’s fine) and the baby dies. Typical Noir ending right? Wrong! See, the baby’s death is a HAPPY ending!!! Dr Nice Guy assures her that the baby’s death was for the best, because now she’s free from hubby’s tyranny and she and the doc can live happily ever after. WOW! I thought I was the only one on earth who would think that not having to raise a baby would be a good thing. Never mind the fact that if the baby was a girl and you were married to James Mason, you might have problems 14 years down the line. “Lolita…” (insert your own James Mason voice here.)

Right, BEWARE MY LOVELY.



A widow (Lupino) hires a transient handyman (Ryan) to help her out over the holidays. The handyman turns out to be a psycho on the lam after murdering his previous employer. He locks the widow in the house, tormenting her, threatening to rape and/or kill her one minute and helping her trim the Christmas tree the next.

With a couple of powerhouse actors like Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan trapped in a classic Film Noir scenario that Eddie Muller called “Adam and Eve in a can,” you’d think this one would be a knockout. I thought it was fun and entertaining, but unfortunately, it’s not quite as good as it could have been. I love both these actors and as I said, I’ll happily watch Ryan do anything, but this film has some problems. It’s got good stuff too (Lupino with scissors! Ryan in really tight pants!) but I was bothered by Lupino’s utter helplessness for the majority of the film. It just didn’t seem like it should have been all that hard for her to get out of the house. The period setting also seemed a little odd (1918) especially considering that the plot could have just as easily taken place in any decade. Ryan’s psycho handyman was pretty by-the-numbers, but it’s him, so I didn’t care. I really liked the scene where Ryan puts on her dead hubby’s army coat. Maybe I would have liked to see a little more spunk from Lupino and a little more of a realistic trapped feeling inside the house, but the print was gorgeous and I just can’t get enough of Ryan’s face. Ida is pretty easy on the eyes too. Glad I caught this one on the big screen.

Also, am I crazy or was that Noir City regular William Tallman who played Lupino’s dead husband, visible only in photographs?

Tonight, THE HOUSTON STORY and NEW ORLEANS UNCENSORED.

First of all, sorry for the delay on this post. Blame the ongoing construction fuckstickery in my tiny house. But never mind all that. On to the movies.

We started off the night with the brilliantly titled THEY WON’T BELIEVE ME.



Robert Young as a womanizing studmuffin? Does Marcus Welby have to choke a bitch? This one took a some serious suspension of disbelief for me, but once I got over trying to figure out why Jane Greer and Susan Hayward wanted to nail Robert Young, I liked this one way more than I thought I would. And although it’s not on this poster, I loved the tagline host Alan Rode shared with the audience during his introduction: “When a man goes to the devil, he usually takes a woman with him. This man took three!”

Young is a married Lothario who gets himself tangled up with a pretty young reporter (Greer) and a gold digging tramp (Hayward) while his rich wife (Rita Johnson) tries to bring him to heel. The plot hinges on a clever, surprising twist and I don’t want to give it away but it involves post-mortem mistaken identity. It also had an (almost) Noir ending. Weirdly abrupt, but still decidedly unhappy. Sort of. Of course Blackmoore and I still found ourselves wanting to make with the rewrites, at least to draw out the tension and pacing in that final scene. Damn know-it-all writers. But even as is, this one is definitely worth hunting down a copy if you can.

And I have to ask: am I the only one who thought the way they played up the wife’s relationship with her “special friend” the Palomino stallion was a little bit weird?

The second feature was A WOMAN’S SECRET.



Sexy, kittenish Gloria Grahame vs. busty redheaded Maureen O’Hara in a lingerie catfight? What’s not to like? The whole rest of this movie.

O’Hara plays a has-been singer who lost her voice to laryngitis and Grahame is her foxy, fixer-upper protégé. The movie starts with Graham being shot (but not killed) and O’Hara confessing to the crime, then works backwards from there. If it had any balls, it could have been a B-movie ALL ABOUT EVE but unfortunately, it’s really more of a sappy love triangle (sort of) with a meddling inspector’s wife who reads too much Miss Marple thrown in for comedy relief. Even young Gloria Grahame at her eyebrow-raising, trampy best couldn’t save this one.

You could have programmed SECRET along with the Joan Crawford bomb THIS WOMAN IS (not really) DANGEROUS and called it “Chick Flick Noir.” That way, you’d know which night to skip.

Tomorrow night, I’m back in the saddle for more Joan Crawford in FEMALE ON THE BEACH and more comedy Noir with HAZARD.

Granite-faced Charles McGraw is back for more, this time as an obsessed insurance investigator in LOOPHOLE.



When nearly fifty Gs go missing during a routine audit, bank teller Sullivan is falsely accused of masterminding the brazen heist. He struggles to find the real perp and prove his innocence, all the while being hounded and stalked by tenacious pit-bull investigator McGraw. McGraw owns this picture, though Mary Beth Hughes is also fantastic as the steely femme fatale behind the real bank robber, a middle-aged teller who was able to pass himself off as one of the bank examiners to make off with the dough. I really would have loved to see a scene between McGraw and Hughes, maybe something along the lines of the "dollar sign for a heart" scene with Sterling Hayden and Marie Windsor in THE KILLING. The abrupt, brickwall everything’s-all-better-now ending was the only wrong note in an otherwise great B thriller packed with historic Los Angeles locations and street scenes. Loved it.

But as much as I enjoyed LOOPHOLE, KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE may be my favorite so far this year.



Seems strange for a Film Noir festival, but so far this year we’ve only had two outright down endings out of a dozen flicks. First one was BRUTE FORCE and last night we finally got another. You know, the everybody’s fucked kind of ending that us Noir junkies crave. I’m not giving anything away by saying that, because the film starts off with Cagney dead and all his accomplices on trial. Then we flash back to a violent jail break that features luscious Barbara Payton in male drag (!!!) and the plot doesn’t take its foot off the gas for 102 minutes. There’s a brutal supermarket heist, crooked cops, a snake-oil spiritualist, a shyster lawyer, a millionaire’s horny, thrill-seeking daughter and Cagney at his cheerfully sadistic best. Ward Bond and Barton MacLane, who also played cops in THE MALTESE FALCON are sensational as the corrupt inspectors who try to shake Cagney down and wind up getting shaken down themselves. Both blatantly sexy and brutally violent, this movie was a knockout from start to finish. Hunt this one down any way you can. You won’t be sorry.

Last night’s offering was a foreign intrigue double bill. First up, the atmospheric and delirious thriller JOURNEY INTO FEAR.



This movie makes absolutely no sense, but I couldn’t have cared less. It was a weird, wild ride and I enjoyed every minute of it. If you’re looking for a tightly constructed plot, this one isn’t for you, but if you want shady characters, exotic women and shadowy, noirish atmosphere you’ll get it. In spades.

An engineer, played by Joseph Cotten, is in Istanbul with his sweet clueless wife on some sort of gun-related business (this wasn’t exactly clear to me) when he discovers that Nazi agents are after him. He goes on the lam, pursued by a creepy, fat and bespectacled assassin. He finds himself mixed up with all sorts of weird and wonderful characters, including sexy dancer Delores Del Rio. How about this astounding leopard costume?



Director (or partial director, since many scenes were apparently reshot/recut by the studio) Orson Welles also plays a small role as Colonel Haki, the Turkish head of intelligence who is trying to help our beleaguered hero while lusting after his wife. Really there’s no point even trying to summarize the plot on this one, but it’s definitely worth watching for all the wonderful, quirky characters.

Second in line was THE BRIBE, staring Robert Taylor and Ava Gardener.



In addition to the foreign intrigue angle, the other thing these two films had in common was the fact that both featured shady, slovenly fat men who were far more memorable than the bland, hunky heroes. While JOURNEY’s fat hit man was silent and menacing, Charles Laughton’s “pie-shaped” henchman is full of slippery, scheming double-talk as he tries to convince cop Taylor and his married lover Gardner to betray each other. Again, the plot is almost beside the point. Something to do with stolen airplane engines being exported and sold on a sultry and obviously fictional Central American island called “Carlota.” But again, I really didn’t care. Taylor was pretty wooden, especially in contrast to Laughton and Vincent Price, but I still enjoyed the hell out of this film. I especially loved the final chase through the carnival crowd and the big shoot out amid exploding fireworks. Recommended.

Next in line, more McGraw (and can you ever really get enough McGraw?) with LOOPHOLE and KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE.