The COVID-19 crisis among other things stopped could the Film Geeks San Diego’s year-long presentation of Italian Genre Films that my sweetie-wife and I were enjoying so much. So, while we wait for the crisis to pass, we have been scrounging streaming services for gems of Italian Genre movie from the 70s and earlier. Last night we watched Caliber 9 1972.

I would classify Caliber 9 as an Italian neo-noir. It stars Gastone Moschin as Ugo Piazza a small time mobbed up crook just released from three years in prison. Unfortunately for Ugo both the police and the local crime boss, Mikado, believe that Ugo took part in the theft of 300 hundred thousand American dollars from the mob and that he has the money stashed away. Even Ugo’s girlfriend Nelly, played by Barbara Bouchet, thinks he stole the cash. When Mikado puts a particularly brute thug Rocco on point for finding out where Ugo has hidden the loot, thing begin to spiral out of control leading to murder and Ugo’s quest for revenge.

While the quality of these 70s era Italian exploitative movie can vary a great deal I thoroughly enjoyed Caliber 9. This film has a gritty, realism to it that helped sell the story to betrayal, greed, and fractured loyalties. It is not surprising that there is a re-make currently in post-production slated for a release this year, but between the trouble with foreign producers finding American distribution and the pandemic who knows if we’ll get a chance to see that in theaters at all. It’s a nice tip of the hat to the original that Barbara Bouchet will be appearing in the remake.

Caliber 9 is currently streaming on Amazon as one of the movies available to Prime Members.

Continuing my expedition into Columbia Noir hosted on the Criterion Channeland early Kim Novak performances Sunday night I streamed the 1955 noir 5 Against the House.

Directed by Phil Karlson from a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and John Barnwell based on a novel of the same name by Jack Finney who is better known for penning the novel The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 5 Against the House is about a collection of college students that decide to rob a Reno Casino as a prank with intentions to return the money. Naturally the plan goes from prank to plot when one of the students seizes on the idea that this sudden influx of cash will end his troubles.

While the characters attend Midwestern College, they are older than the usual student body because they are Korean War Veterans going to school on the G.I. Bill, particularly Al, played by Guy Madison, whose life was saved in combat by ‘Brick’, played by Brian Keith. Brick suffers from what is now known as PTSD and struggles both academically and socially due to his difficulty integrating back into civilian life and leaving the horrors of the battlefield behind. His instability coupled with a tendency towards violence drive much of the films tension for the second half.

My trouble with this movie is that while there is taunt tension in the second half the first is devoid of any serious conflict and none that concerns all of our major characters. Al wants to marry his girl Kaye, played by Kim Novak, but she’s uncertain about their love and skittish to commit while the others in the friendly clique engage in freshman hazing and comic banter that is well written but serves no function in advancing the plot, making this 83 minute feature feel much longer. The actors rang from adequate to quite engaging with the obvious star power of Novak and Keith driving much of this movie’s appeal.

Continuing my exploration of the Criterion Channel’s hosting of a number of noirs from Columbia studios I watched Pushover from 1954. The movie stars Fred McMurray, a decade after his turn as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, E.G. Marshall, Phil Carey, and introducing Kim Novak. Directed by Richard Quine and with a screenplay by Roy Huggins based upon two different stories. This is not the only time two source materials have been combined into a single screenplay though the best-known example of that process is probably The Towering Infernowhich was adapted from the novels The Glass Inferno and The Tower, this movie is a serviceable noir, better that Drive a Crooked Road but not quite on target.

McMurray plays police detective Paul Sheridan, who along with his partner Rick (Carey) is staking out Lona (Novak) the girlfriend of a man wanted for bank robbery and murder. Paul’s boss stresses that after Lona leads them to their suspect, he is to be taken alive so that he can disclose where hundreds of thousands stolen from the bank has been hidden. Paul become at first infatuated and then emotionally entangled with Lona and eventually hatches a scheme to, using his duty as an excuse, kill her boyfriend, and then take off with her and the stolen loot. Getting to this point in the film takes about half of the 88-minute running time and felt like a tire re-tread of Double Indemnity. Once Paul’s less than brilliant plan goes astray complication upon complication pile on his haphazard improvisations with escape becoming less and less likely.

During the set-up of this movie I was scarcely engaged with this cruder version of Wilder’s far superior film but once Paul’s plan derailed I became more invested. The nature of the plan’s failure was nicely established but without blaring klaxons announcing that establishment and I found it very credible that a person once they crossed the line discovers that were never the nice and good person that they had imagined themselves to have been. Still that didn’t justify the tedious and well-trod first half and aside from Novak most of the cast seemed to be sleepwalking through the establishment. Perhaps what makes Pushover unique as a noir is that Novak’s character is not a femme fatale and generates considerable sympathy because she is not the murderous schemer.

Part of the Columbia Noir series running on the Criterion Channel Drive a Crooked Road stars Mickey Rooney in a dramatic lead along with Kevin McCarthy a couple of years before his encounter with Pod People in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Diane Foster in the role of the obligatory Femme Fatale.

Rooney plays Eddie Shannon a mechanic and a driver in local car races. After coming in second in a race Steven Norris (McCarthy) and his partner in crime Harold (Jack Kelly) single out Eddie as someone without a family or a girlfriend, perfect for their scheme. Playing upon Eddie’s social awkwardness and self-consciousnesses over his prominently scared face Barbara (Foster) seduces the naïve Eddie emotionally manipulating him so that he will be willing to assist the gang in a daring bank robbery that requires his impressive driving and mechanical skills.

With a brief running time of just 83 minutes Drive a Crooked Road doesn’t have the room to fully explore either that characters or the situation but rather races from plot element to plot element ticking off the elements of a story without ever fully engaging the audience. Directed by Richard Quine from a script by Blake Edwards and Quine this movie presents a serviceable premise that fails to deliver. An overreliance on under cranking the camera, lowering the frame rate artificially acceleration the action on screen, along with an intrusive musical score that doesn’t know when to back off and allow the actors to carry a scene Drive a Crooked Road ends up feeling cheap despite boasting an impressive and skilled cast. While the story is a classic noir set-up and pay off, he did it for the money, he did it for the girl and he didn’t get either the money or the girl, this film spins its wheels without ever reaching a destination.

I remember wanting to see the neo-noir back in 1991 when it played at a local art house theater. Somehow, I never made it to the theater and missed the movie entirely.

The Grifters, adapted from the novel of the same name, stars John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening as con artists, i.e. grifters, Roy, Lilly, and Myra respectively . Roy is Lilly’s son but because she was so young when he was born he was passed off as her younger brother for most of his life. Lilly works for a major Maryland mobster, Bobo, traveling to racetracks and placing large bets to reduce the odds for longshot horses and is estranged from Roy. Roy is a short con artist, playing trick on marks that pay off quickly with elaborate set-up allowing him to avoid most form of legal entrapment and enforcement. Myra is a long con artist looking for a new partner and is involved with Roy though at the start of the story neither are aware that they are both grifters. Grievously injured by a mark, Roy lands in the hospital bringing all three of the character together and dynamic of the triangle are established. Lilly wants her son out of the racket and to go ‘straight,’ Myra wants to displace Lilly as a major influence in Roy’s life, and Roy struggles to find a way to satisfy both women while maintaining his independence. Stakes quickly rise and soon it becomes a matter of life and death over Roy’s stash of cash and his relationship with Lilly.

Directed by Stephen Frears and produced by Martin Scorsese The Grifters is a bleak, cynical look at humanity and the self-destructive nature of greed and the need to dominate. I enjoyed the film thought I found the ending less than fully satisfying. While the story and plot are both resolved I tend to prefer for a story to force a character to make a choice, a hard, difficult choice, rather than having an impulsive action produce unintended consequences that resolve the conflicts. This is not the same as a deus ex machina where an unestablished power or character magically removes the troubles but rather in this case a realistic and predictable outcome comes from a moment’s anger rather than a character making the decision to produce that final outcome.

Still, I am glad I watched the film before it finished its run on The Criterion Channel at the end of the month.

Recently a friend and I watched The Sniper as part of The Criterion Channel’s March programing of Columbia Noir. This movie, released in 1952, is shockingly relevant today and presents a story and complexity about its central character well ahead of its time.

Directed by Edward Dmytryk, who also gave us one of my favorite films The Caine Mutiny, and written by Harry Brown, The Sniper is focused on Edward Miller a troubled young man recently released from prison. Miller struggles against a deep-seated hatred of women and after a couple of attempts to get help fail and he is romantically rejected Miller loses control and begins a murderous spree as a sniper killing dark haired women. The police led by Lieutenant Frank Kafka and his partner Joe Ferris are nearly helpless to catch Miller. Stuck in a mindset that looks for motive their focus on peeping toms and men with a history of sexual assault their investigation gets nowhere until the department’s psychologist Dr. Kent, redirects their attention by use of what would eventually become psychological profiling. In a final inversion of classic film tropes, the ending doesn’t rely upon exciting gunplay but instead leaves the viewer with a haunting image of a man in pain.

When we decided to watch The Sniper with its subject matter of random murder we expected a film that leaned heavily towards the exploitive but instead we were treated to a thoughtful, though occasionally didactic, and serious treatment of the problems American society has, then and now, in dealing with psychological trauma and the use of a prison system in lieu of hospitals. Aside from one scene where the plot is brought to a full stop to allow for speechmaking by the filmmakers The Sniper does an excellent job of presenting its themes within the context of a compelling narrative. This one is well worth seeking out and watching.

Apparently, the Criterion Channel recently dropped a bunch of noir films into their streaming service. Yesterday as I browsed the ‘recently added’ queue I stumbled across noir after noir and the titles were unknown to me. Under the limitations of a time and temperament I selected Murder by Contract as the one to watch Sunday night.

Hailing from 1958 Murder by Contract is a low budget quickly produced film noir centered on Claude and man with large dreams and no empathy. Claude leaves the respectable life of an upright citizen and becomes an assassin for the mob in order to secure the funds for his dream home. Curious for a character of this type and profession Claude rejects firearms for most of his contracts and quickly establishes himself as a killer of unusual competence. The mob sends Claude out west to Los Angeles where he meets up with two local hoods, George and Marc, for the most challenging assignment of his cruel career where nothing goes as anyone planned.

Though the word is never used in the film Claude is presented as a sociopath. He professes to have taught himself to have no feeling but it is more likely that this is a justification for the character than an actual achievement. His intellect and cool demeanor carry him through most of his assignments unperturbed but as this final contract goes awry the illusion of his self-control crumbles.

Shot in seven days Murder by Contract presents the material in a spare and unadorned style. Aside from Vince Edwards as Claude who would later go on to portray Doctor Ben Casey from 1961 thru 1966, the aspect of casting that leapt out to me was that four future Star Trek (the original series) guest actors also appeared in the crime drama, Phillip Pine, who played the genocidal Colonel Green in the episode The Savage Curtain, is the hoodlum Marc, Kathie Brown plays a secretary who moonlights as an escort and she appeared in the episode Wink of an Eye as Deela one of Kirk’s alien romantic conquests, Joseph Mell who plays Harry also was in the pilot for Star Trek as a trader from Earth who sparks Pike’s interest in the Orion slave woman, and finally David Roberts as a Hall of records clerk but got a promotion to doctor for the episode The Empath.

While lacking the depth of characterization found in classic noir such as Double Indemnity and with a jazz inspired soundtrack that bordered on irritating, Murder by Contract still proves to be an interesting entry in the sub-genre from the end of its classical period.

Last night after I finished a few rounds of on-line Call of Duty: WWII I surfed my streaming services looking for something to watch before heading off to bed. What I found was What Did Jack Do? an odd two-character black-and-white short film, just 17 minutes, about a detective interrogating a witness at a train station. Aside from a waitress that brings coffee during the interrogation the entire film is unnamed Detective and the suspect Jack having a non sequiturfilled absurdist conversation.

Written, starring, and directed by David Lynch it’s normal to expect the absurd and strange but I was not fully prepared for this little gem. You see, Jack is a capuchin, a South American monkey. Utilizing n ungraded effect similar to what was used in the cartoon Clutch Cargo of superimposing a person’s speaking mouth on a pre-photographed image, Jack rebels, denies, and dodges the detective dogged digging into a murder.

What Did Jack Do? carries a copyright from 2016 and was shown at festivals but only last month did Lynch allow it to be added to Netflix’s service. I must admit that with suggestions of barnyard deviancy and murder this film worked for me more than some of Lynch’s feature films. It was oddly compelling, tense, and downright funny and certainly worth it’s brief running time.

Directed by Fritz Lang The Woman in the Window is a noir film about a married professor (Edward G. Robinson) who becomes fascinated by the subject of an oil painting hanging nears his gentlemen’s club. The subject, a lovely dark-haired woman (Joan Bennet) also fascinate the professor’s two pals, the city’s district attorney and a physician. A late-night chance encounter brings the professor and the subject together while the professor’s family is out on vacation for a week. They become friendly and her returns to her apartment to see sketches of her by the painting’s artist. An unexpected entrance by a mysterious and violent man end in the stranger’s death and to avoid professional ruin and unwanted questions the professor and the subject conspire to dump the body and never see each other again to hide any association with the killing. Naturally right from the start things unravel and both characters find themselves racing to stay ahead of bot the law and criminal elements.

The Woman in the Window is a tight, taunt noir that I watched on one of Roku’s free streaming channels dedicated to noir movies. The acting was top notch, the tension built wonderfully as the professor’s ignorance of police procedures and his friend’s ability as district attorney closed the nose around the pair. And yet I cannot truly recommend this movie. In the final minutes the script falls apart, perhaps in a bid to avoid trouble with the MPAA Production code and left me with an utterly unsatisfying resolution to the what had been a thrilling experience. I cannot tell you what the final ending is without massive spoilers and it may work for you but be warned it cheats.