Noirvember!

I watch film noir year round, but Noirvember was a great time rewatch or discover some gems of the genre. I’ve listed some favorites below in honor of Noirvember.

Now, Eddie Muller has a list of his favorite noir films on his website, and I highly encourage you to take a peek. For those of you who aren’t aware of Eddie Muller, he’s been coined the “Czar of Noir” by my good friend, James Ellroy (I hope you know who he is, if you don’t, go read Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, and everything else he’s ever written!). Back to Eddie: he’s the host of TCM’s Noir Alley and leads the charge for the Film Noir Foundation and the preservation of film noir. I had the pleasure of meeting Eddie at a Film Noir Festival held in Colorado—what a great time and what a great bunch of movies they screened.

So, after reading Eddie’s list of favorite noir films, why should you care about mine? I have some crossover with his list (how could I not?), but these are some favorites from the classic film noir era that socked me in the gut. Some of these films will be obvious and well-known, while others have be new to you. I’m also not hung up on what is pure film noir, and maybe some of these don’t check the noir box for you.

What you’ll notice is the crossover with actors and directors with these films. You’ll see actors and actresses like Robert Ryan, Lizabeth Scott, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Ann Sheridan, Ray Milland, Dan Duryea, and others show up quite often, but I don’t mention them below—even if they’re in the films I listed!

I know I probably left off quite a few, but this is just a quick list off the top of my head. Let me know some of your favorites!

• He Walked By Night, T-Men, Raw Deal - any time you have John Alton’s lighting (also see The Big Combo), and Anthony Mann’s directing (even if uncredited as in He Walked By Night), you have instant film noir.

• The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, Murder, My Sweet, Dead Reckoning - okay, a couple of these have Bogart, and they’re close to noir. The books were written by Hammett, Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely was filmed as Murder, My Sweet), and Goodis - all hardboiled or noir-like. They may not be pure noir, but they come close.

• Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce - With James M. Cain’s novels as the inspiration—the man wrote dark and flawed characters as good as anyone—it’s film noir. Double Indemnity is right at the top of my list of the all-time best films period.

• In A Lonely Place, Ride The Pink Horse - These are great films, and the novels were written by Dorothy B. Hughes—she wrote noir as well as anyone. Dark, disturbing characters, especially in the Bogart film with Gloria Grahame (a film noir fixture) of the same name. While the film differs a little from the novel, this is one of those few instances where the film and the novel are of equal greatness.

• D.O.A. - Edmund O’Brien. A great premise, which I won’t spoil. O’Brien was in a few others like 711 Ocean Drive (and he’s in The Killers, listed below).

• The Killers, Criss Cross, Phantom Lady - Robert Siodmak is another great film noir director, and two of these films star Burt Lancaster. The Killers was based on the Ernest Hemingway short story, but don’t miss Criss Cross—it has Yvonne deCarlo who is absolutely wonderful.

• Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, Double Indemnity, Ace In The Hole - yes, Double Indemnity is listed twice, this time because it’s directed by Billy Wilder—a versatile director who did screwball comedies just as well as directing film noir. All those films are classics. You won’t be disappointed in any of those films, and they’re all so different, yet still noir!

• The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, Clash By Night, Ministry of Fear, Human Desire - Fritz Lang. Anything directed by Fritz Lang is going to be disturbing. He casts Lee Marvin, Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Barbara Stanwyck to name a few—all known for their noir roles. His earlier stuff helped film noir become a thing: Metropolis and M—Peter Lorre in his creepiest of his many creepy roles.

• Gilda - directed by Charles Vidor and with Rita Hayworth in what I think is her signature role. Also has Glenn Ford, another film noir staple (see The Big Heat).

• Night And The City, Pickup on South Street - Richard Widmark’s in these, and he’s great.

• Asphalt Jungle - directed by John Huston (also on this list with Maltese Falcon), with a young Marilyn Monroe along with Sterling Hayden—another film noir regular, what a great tough guy.

• Sweet Smell of Success, Brute Force, Criss Cross, The Killers - Burt Lancaster is menacing and overbearing in Success. You could do worse than explore some of these Burt Lancaster roles. Pure noir.

• Laura - the novel was written by Vera Caspary (as was the Blue Gardenia), they are worth reading as well as watching. This is a haunting film with some cool twists and has a great cast: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, and Vincent Price. It’s directed by Otto Preminger, who also directed The Man With The Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra—a noir film depicting drug addiction.

• Out Of The Past - Robert Mitchum in one of the definitive noir films with Kirk Douglas and Jane Greer. Talk about a man who could take over a film. Also check out Night of the Hunter, Crossfire, The Big Steal, Where Danger Lives, and The Racket.

• Kiss Me Deadly - Ralph Meeker was such a great Mike Hammer - Mickey Spillane was not a fan of this film, but it’s so much fun, and watching Mike Hammer get in over his head and opening Pandora’s Box is amazing and the inspiration for many many moments in subsequent films.

• The Narrow Margin - Dana Andrews and another film noir staple—Marie Windsor. Takes place mostly on a train! Trains appear in quite a few noir flicks, including a few on this list.

• The Third Man, Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Niagara, Shadow of a Doubt - okay, these are Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. The first three all with Orson Welles, and Niagara featuring Marilyn Monroe, while Shadow of a Doubt was directed by Hitchcock (not really a noir director, but a couple of his might qualify (such as Vertigo—though that one’s in color even if the overall tone qualifies). Like Gilda, it’s hard to not watch Rita Hayworth in any role!

• Gun Crazy - this is a 1950 Bonnie & Clyde or Natural Born Killers—only better! Too bad the production code got in the way of what could have been, though it makes for more creative choices.

• They Drive By Night, Private Hell 36, High Sierra, The Hitch-Hiker, The Big Knife - all of these have Ida Lupino in them. Lupino was a Hollywood pioneer, a female director in the studio system. She’s great as an actress of director. A couple of these also have Bogart.

• The Killing - great cast, caper film directed by Kubrick.

• Detour - ugly from start to finish. Horrible people doing horrible things.

• One more: Nightmare Alley - carnival noir with Tyrone Powers in, to me, his best performance.

Why you should give screwball comedies of the 1930s a try

I thought since we were headed into a weekend, it’d be neat to look at screwball comedies and their continued relevance, especially today. Now, before you dismiss this because I’m talking about “old” movies, or “black and white” movies, or movies with a bunch of dead people I’ve never heard of, consider this question: What was the first film to sweep the 5 major categories at the Academy Awards?

Answer: It Happened One Night, a screwball comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, and directed by Frank Capra (a director that displayed a wide range and is responsible for so many classics). It Happened One Night won Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay. Only two other films achieved this: One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Silence of the Lambs.

Screwball comedies of the 1930s are more relevant today than most people realize. In fact, I bet many people don’t know exactly what I’m talking about when I write the words screwball comedy. This isn’t the Three Stooges and not The Marx Brothers, not really, but a few of their MGM films might come close. Their are comedic detective films as well, something like The Thin Man — so much fun, but not exactly screwball.

This type of comedy came about during the Great Depression and carried through into the early 1940s. People needed an escape, like we do today. Please put aside any so-called “modern” notions and sensibilities. Of course some of these films will have outdated ideas, situations, and so forth, but these films will surprise you. Why? So many of these films, like My Man Godfrey, starring William Powell and Carole Lombard dealt with real issues, issues of economic class and the little everyman or everywoman against the government. They tackled issues, take His Girl Friday—Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, for instance, they’re reporters who trade crackling dialogue while trying to save a man from execution. You wouldn’t think a film like that would be funny, but it’s wonderful. A dark screwball? Try Arsenic & Old Lace - again, it’s Cary Grant!

My Man Godfrey: the film opens with a group of rich people taking part in a scavenger hunt. One of the “items” they must find and bring back what they call a “forgotten man”, basically a homeless man. William Powell (The Thin Man) plays this “forgotten man” who lost everything in the stock market crash. The family that “finds” him for the scavenger hunt decides to hire him as their butler as sort of a good deed. They see him as a homeless man, but he’s more than that, and in teaches the family a lesson in how to treat people with respect.

These films transported the viewer into funny situations with some serious social commentary. You get actors like Cary Grant (not just a handsome face, but a mainstay of these comedies) and Jean Arthur or Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy (also mainstays of this sub-genre) looking silly while trying to win over their love or prove a point to someone with money and power or social standing. Another thing I love about these is the way they toyed with the Production Code—these films ran circles around the code. By today’s standards these films would seem tame (as far as sexual conduct, violence, etc.), but for that time and for having to abide by the “Code”, these films had to be more clever and subversive. I think it took more creativity to make a film back then. Even Hitchcock made a screwball comedy: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard!

These directors were versatile (directing in all sorts of genres: drama, noir, comedy, action, thriller), and they were big names: Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges, and the list goes on and on.

I could go on and on, but I’ll list a bunch of films, these are all fun if you can get past the black and white and get over your hangups with their “old fashioned” ideas. These are fun and they have a message! Try a few out!

Universal Monsters

My first exposure to the classic Universal Monsters came in the form of a card game.

Yes, in 1964 Milton Bradley released a monster version of Old Maid! I found this card game at my grandparents' house when I was a little kid in the mid-1970s. The game must have belonged to one of my aunts. I'd look at these cards and get scared and a few were creepy. I mean, they were mostly the disembodied heads of monsters, and when you're four or five years old it's scary!  I sometimes wonder what happened to those cards.


My next exposure to the Universal Monsters was through watching Abbott & Costello at my grandparents' house on Sundays after church. To this day I enjoy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and that was my first real exposure to the film monsters. Watching Abbott and Costello was a good way of being introduced to these guys. It's a fun film, try it some time, it has Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr., and Vincent Price does the voice of the Invisible Man at the end of the film. It's funny, and as a kid it was both funny and scary.

A few years ago, Universal released a few sets of the famous Universal Monsters, some came in a plain old case, but I found the Coffin Collection and knew that was the set I needed!

The set contains the classic films: Dracula (and a second, Spanish version of Dracula that was shot on the same sets, but only when the main production wasn't filming, and to be honest, it's really good!). Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon(includes the original 3D version on Bluray!).

The coffin case contains a few goodies, like a booklet, and eight poster cards, one for each of the main films. I love this set, and while the films aren't as truly frightening as some that have followed, they're fun and even some of the special effects are still pretty cool!

It? If You Want Clowns...

Try Killer Klowns From Outer Space! I was hanging out at a friend's place back in the late '80s and we stumbled upon Killer Klowns one day while flipping through the channels and we couldn't stop watching.

Why? Well, the film was crazy. It was funny. It was scary. It was goofy. The Klowns in this film are wait for it...from outer space! They travel around in a spaceship that looks like a giant circus tent! Arnold thought the Predator was one ugly mother&*!$%@, but these Klowns are hideous. My very first night at Dragon Con this year I saw three people dressed up as these things and it was awesome!

Some spoilers here, but do you care? The movie has been around since the '80s.

So, why did the klowns land on earth? Well, they want to capture humans and put them in giant cotton candy cocoons, let them ferment, and drink them with a giant krazy straw of course! Duh! They terrorize a small town with popcorn guns and they twist balloons into dogs that come to life and have this little howl. The movie is bad, but it's a blast.

There are some creepy parts, some sinister and gory parts, but mostly it's just a fun horror film with ugly clowns running around. The Chiodo brothers are responsible for this flick--they are the ones behind the marionettes in Team America: World Police.

If you just want to turn off your brain and have a few laughs after seeing It, give Killer Klowns From Outer Space a try. I don't promise an award winning film, just a fun one even if it has clowns in it, and most people I know hate clowns.