We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
My previous post about Steve’s 1954/55 noirs should of course be headed FOUR of 4. Apologies for any confusion.
Many of the titles in Steve’s 1955 noirs video are very familiar to me and would be to other filmgoers of 1955 as well. Examples are Finger Man, The Crooked Web and Shack Out on 101 all starring B list actor Frank Lovejoy [whose A list claim to fame was probably supporting roles in Bogie’s In a Lonely Place and Vincent Price’s House of Wax].
Unremarkable, if often enjoyable, low-budget movies such as those were par-for-the course on the countless double bills which fed the prolifery of backstreet cinemas of the Belfast of the 1950s. The average running time of the 3 movies that I have just listed is 79 mins and Steve’s average rating for the 3 falls just short of 60% which The Work Horse regards as the bottom line for a merely “good” movie.
Whatever the quality of the movie concerned though, again in the 1955 noir video Steve’s materials do not disappoint and are entertaining me to the tune of 98.5% in the 1955 noirs offering. These I consider contain the very best STILLS:
1/Female Jungle
2/Hell’s Island – Payne was prolific 50s adventure/western hero
3/Finger Man
4/2 for Female on the Beach
5/Naked Street
6/Chicago Syndicate
7/Tight Spot
8/ALL for Shack-out on 101 – wow!
9/Queen Joan
10/2 for Illegal – wow!
11/New York Confidential
12/2 for House of Bamboo
13/Violent Saturday-Mature at the height of his “he-man” heyday
14/The Big Knife
15/The Big Combo
16/The Desperate Hours
18/Rififi
19/Cast a Dark Shadow – England’s Sir Derek Niven van den Bogaerde aka Dirk Bogarde showing us what a terrific actor he was.
20/Killer’s Kiss – Early Kubrick offering – just his 2nd feature film – with a running time of a mere 67 mins. Working with practically no budget and largely without on-location filming permits Stanley had to remain unnoticed while shooting in the nation’s busiest city [NY City] using hand-held cameras and sometimes secretly shooting from a nearby vehicle. Sort of like Ed Wood used to do as he too was cash-strapped.
21/Bullet for Joely. Ironically the tagline for 1941’s Manpower was “Raft and Robinson at brawling point” When making that 1941 film with Dietrich the pair of men got into a real-life fistfight on the set. The two were conversely very well behaved on the set of A Bullet for Joely 14 years later . However whether that was a result of the pair having mellowed over the years; their “kissing and making up”; or a reflection of their fading star power giving them less latitude to misbehave we shall never know.
22/Night of the Hunter. Raved over by historians as a “classic” it is a bleak and morbid film that I detest . I know Steve gives it his no 1 spot; but then as Uncle Abe Lincoln observed “You can fool some of the people ALL of the time.”
Whilst there is much on-screen entertainment to be found in Steve’s 1955 noir selections few would probably be regarded as true classics. For example Bogie’s Desperate Hours is for me OK as a hostage movie but not in the league of Petrified Forest; and today I remember The Desperate Hours mostly for Tracy having to withdraw from the ultimate Freddie March part because [according to Betty Bacall] Old Cantankerous wouldn’t enter into a billing compromise arrangement with Bogie who was the bigger box office star at that stage of their careers.
Indeed apart from POSSIBLY -especially if Ladd had been in it – Kiss Me Deadly I personally would probably regard only the two foreign films in the pack as being out-and-out classics: Cluzot’s The Fiends aka Les Diaboliques and the French masterpiece Rififi with critics always lauding the novel 28 mins of complete silence during the famous heist scene in the latter. In later years in for example a Bruce Willis movie where the 4-letter words often WERE the script such silence would have been golden! Rififi was called by Francois Truffaut the best film noir he’d ever seen.
Here though are my own picks of the “very best of Steve” among the 1955 noirs video POSTERS. [FL=foreign language version]-
1/Female Jungle – wow!
2/1st one for Crooked Web
3/1st one for Bullet for Joely
4/1st one for Hell’s Island
5/1st one for Finger Man
6/FL one for Naked Street
7/1st one for 5 Against the House
8/FL for Chicago Syndicate
9/FL for Women’s Prison
10/I Died 1000 Times
11/1st one for Tight Spot-careers of Robinson and Rogers in serious decline
12/1st one for Crashout – without Ladd Bill Bendix give the lead role for once.
13/FL for New York Confidential
14/FL ones for House of Bamboo
15/FL one for Phenix City Story – wow!
16/FL ones for Desperate Hours
17/FL one for Kiss Me Deadly
18/FL ones for Rififi.
17/FL ones for The Big Knife-“’I’m on screen for all but one minute of the 111-minute running time and in that minute when I’m in the washroom the other actors are all talking about me.” 1955 interview with Walter Jack Palance
18/ALL for The Big Combo. Bad guy Richard Conte limbering-up for his key supporting role of Barzini in Godpop 1972 seventeen years later
19/2FL ones for Queen Bee – certainly would NOT have been appropriate title for a Myrna Loy movie!
Welcome back Bob, I hope you had a great holiday. The weather here in Manchester has been nice recently, we might get a hot summer and hopefully no more wearing masks. Thanks for the review, generous rating, info and quotes, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Surprised to read you didn’t like The Night of the Hunter (1955) and do not consider it an “out and out classic” like Rififi and Les Diaboliques. I’m sure there are plenty of film buffs out there that would beg to differ.
1955 was probably the last great noir year. I don’t think 1956 will top it but my chart will contain a surprise at no.1, possibly controversial.
Four films scored 10 out of 10, they are the top 4 on my video chart.
My Video Top 5 –
Night of the Hunter 8.85
Les Diaboliques 8.6
Rififi 8.5
Kiss Me Deadly 8.25
The Desperate Hours 7.7
The UMR Critics Top 5 –
Night of the Hunter 9.3
Kiss Me Deadly 7.9
The Phenix City Story 7.9
The Desperate Hours 7.8
The Big Combo 7.8
IMDB Night of the Hunter trivia – “Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part of the preacher. When he auditioned, a moment that particularly impressed Charles Laughton was when he described the character as “a diabolical sh*t” Mitchum promptly answered, “Present!” Laughton thought Robert Mitchum was “one of the best actors in the world,” he wrote in Esquire of the private man he knew to be different than the public image: “All this tough talk is a blind, you know. He’s a literate, gracious, kind man, with wonderful manners, and he speaks beautifully–when he wants to. He’s a tender man and a very great gentleman. You know, he’s really terribly shy.” Laughton was usually ill at ease with very macho men yet very comfortable with his star. François Truffaut referred to the film as “an experimental film that truly experiments.”
Lillian Gish feared that Charles Laughton and Robert Mitchum might be undercutting Powell’s evil. Laughton explained to her, half joking, that he didn’t want to ruin Mitchum’s future career by pushing him to play total evil, although the touches of humor in the character actually serve to play up the preacher’s essentially ludicrous and haywire psychology. And Mitchum’s borderline buffoonery makes the children’s escape and eventual triumph over him more plausible.”
Next video on Friday.
Wiki also says that 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers was made in “partial film noir style” and I will therefore be checking-out your 1956 film noir video which I presume will be out next to see if that year’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers makes the cut. It’s one of my own fave films of all time thanks in large part to Kevin McCarthy’s stunning performance.
Riot in Cell Block 11 too has actually achieved rather well for itself when all’s said and done. It was initially banned for a while in GB – STEVE you know how squeamish the English in particular can be; to come across men with real b**** you have to visit Ireland!
But overall that movie has been credited with an adjusted domestic gross of just under $90 million by the Work Horse who also gives it a high 75% review rating – and you know how stingy HE can be in such matters!
And he is supported by Wikipedia who certifies that Riot in cell Block 11 turned overall the equivalent of a $30 million profit in today’s money for its studio. All those stats are indeed excellent ones for a small movie such as that one. So the short answer to your query is that the film has seemingly actually attracted fairly-healthy attendances by the general public.
“I have won some of my best notices ever for Atlantic City but it appears that the only ones who have gone to see it are Kirk Douglas’ family and my own family!” – Stephen Burton Lancaster in a 1981 interview.
I have seen 16 top 1955 film noir titles. Favourites are The Night of the Hunter, Les Diaboliques, Rififi, Kiss Me Deadly, The Desperate Hours, The Big Combo, The Big Knife, Violent Saturday, House of Bamboo, Cast a Dark Shadow, Illegal, Killer’s Kiss and 5 Against The House.
I have also seen The Phenix City Story, Tight Spot, and A Bullet for Joey.
Favourite posters and stills are from The Night of the Hunter, Les Diaboliques, Rififi, The Desperate Hours, The Big Knife, Violent Saturday, House of Bamboo, Illegal, and The Naked Street.
Hi Flora, 16 out of 30 is pretty good. There are 6 that I know for sure I’ve seen – Desperate Hours, The Big Knife, House of Bamboo, Les Diaboliques, Kiss Me Deadly and Night of the Hunter. Enjoyed them all, my favourite of the bunch is Night of the Hunter.
Thanks again for commenting, always appreciated. Happy you liked the posters and stills. Another video next friday.