Saturday Night At The Movies

Divine Trash, Hidden Jewels-Part 3: Summer of Darkness

By Dennis Hartley

This week I am continuing a series that I am posting on occasion, spotlighting some films you may have missed, and that your humble reviewer thinks are worth the search and a peek on a slow night (or as an antidote to those dismal summer releases).

The summer of 2007 has been belly belly good for aficionados of film noir (guilty, your honor!). Recent DVD reissues include Criterion’s long awaited restoration of Billy Wilder’s cynical masterpiece “Ace in the Hole”, a trio of great noirs from MGM featuring Fritz Lang’s “The Woman in the Window ”, Orson Welles’ “The Stranger” and “Kansas City Confidential ” (with all three sporting transfers far superior to the public domain prints on previous DVDs) and an outstanding 10 movie box set from Warner Brothers, the “Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 ”.

The real jewels amongst the treasures in the Warner Brothers box set are a pair of cult films that hardcore noir geeks have been itching to get their mitts on for years-“Crime Wave” and “Decoy” (conveniently together on one disc-it’s enough to almost make me believe that there is a God).

“Crime Wave” was originally released in 1954 and was directed by Andre de Toth, who is perhaps more well-remembered for helming stark westerns like “Ramrod” (1947) and “Day of the Outlaw” (1959). After languishing in B-movie obscurity for decades, this strikingly photographed low-budget wonder has been frequently name-checked by noir historians and essayists, slowly building a cult following over the years.

The story itself is fairly standard issue; an ex-con trying to go straight (Gene Nelson) is framed and blackmailed by two former cell mates (portrayed by ubiquitous noir heavy Ted de Corsia and an impossibly young Charles Bronson). Nelson’s character gets a shot at clearing himself by helping a homicide detective (memorably played by a looming, toothpick-chewing Sterling Hayden) bring his blackmailers to justice.

The two main factors setting “Crime Wave” apart from other B-movies of the era are the meticulously composed cinematography (by DP Burt Glennon) and the ingenious use of L.A. locations. Although the decision to shoot almost exclusively on location was likely based more on pragmatism (budgetary constraints) than artistic vision, the end result was a naturalistic, almost documentary-like realism that makes the film feel much less dated than most of its contemporaries. I should mention that this DVD transfer is nearly flawless, taken from what looks like a pristine vault print.

I also send out major kudos to whomever it was who came up with the truly inspired idea to pair up film noir expert extraordinaire Eddie Muller with the master of modern pulp crime fiction, James Ellroy for the commentary track. Muller’s encyclopedic torrent of fascinating trivia and savant-like grasp of All Things Noir is always worth the ride (I heartily recommend you pick up his book “Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir” and/or any DVD reissue that sports a Muller commentary) and having Ellroy in the passenger seat is extra icing on the cake. Ellroy is a riot; panting and growling his way through the commentary and acting like a perverse version of the proverbial kid in the candy store as he spots and identifies familiar L.A. locales. Most interestingly, he posits “Crime Wave” as a spot-on visual time capsule of the 1950s LAPD milieu that informed the backdrop for the series of crime novels usually referred to as his “L.A. quartet” (“The Black Dahlia", “The Big Nowhere”, “L.A. Confidential” and “White Jazz”). Fans of “L.A. Confidential” in particular will likely fall out of their chair like I did when Ellroy exclaims “THAT is Bud White!!” the first time Sterling Hayden’s world-weary, physically intimidating LAPD detective shambles onscreen.

And then (hoo, boy!) there’s “Decoy” (1946), which gets my vote for the closest thing to a David Lynch film prior to, well the moment David Lynch unleashed his first full-length feature film on an unsuspecting public. Featuring a truly demented performance from British actress Jean Gillie as one of the most psychopathic femme fatales ever (replete with an insane cackle that could decalcify your spinal column at twenty paces), this mash-up of “Body Heat ” with “Re-Animator” nearly defies description (although I think I just described it…).

Gillie masticates all the available scenery as Margot Shelby, the mastermind of a small gang of thieves, who comes up with an elaborate scheme to literally bring a former associate back from the dead immediately following his execution in the gas chamber (don’t ask) so she can put the squeeze on him and find out where he hid $400,000 (can’t call that a cliché storyline, can we?).

In order to get to that loot, Margot charms, uses and then unceremoniously discards a string of hapless male chumps in record time (the film runs less than 80 minutes). In the film’s most infamous scene, she runs over her lover, then just for giggles, backs up the car and runs over him again (remember, this movie predates “Faster, Pussycat! Kill!... Kill!” by a good 20 years). A must see for genre diehards who think they’ve seen it all.

By the way, Warner is selling the five double feature discs in the box set “a la carte” as well; but they list at a hefty $20 each. I would recommend picking up the box set-Amazon and some of the brick and mortar retailers are selling the collection for around $40 (averaging out to $4.00 per title) making this DVD reissue the bargain of the year for noir enthusiasts!


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