Thunder Road (1958)

I'm wrapping up Noirvember with another Robert Mitchum movie that's been on my list for a long time. It's the inspiration for the title of our Thundarr the Barbarian podcast, so it's about time I finally watched it.

Who's In It: Robert Mitchum (The Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear), Gene Barry (The War of the Worlds, Bat Masterson), Keely Smith (sang with and was married to Louis Prima for a while), Sandra Knight (Frankenstein's Daughter, The Terror), and James Mitchum (son of Bob).

What It's About: A moonshine runner (Robert Mitchum) fights a war on two fronts (the law and a crime organization trying to take over the territory) while trying to protect the people he cares about.

How It Is: Mitchum's as charming as ever and I really love that his son is playing his kid brother. They don't just look alike; they also have a lot of chemistry and it raises the stakes considerably to believe so deeply that Luke (Robert Mitchum) is desperate to keep Robin (James) out of the driver's seat. I do wonder how awesome it would have been if Elvis Presley (Mitchum's first choice to play Robin; curse you, Col. Tom Parker) had been in the film, but as much as I love Elvis, I'm not sure I'd want to trade in James.

There's a lot of cool driving stuff, with Luke using a couple of different, tricked out cars. And I enjoyed his confrontations with the law (represented by Gene Barry) and the crime syndicate. The Appalachia and Memphis settings are cool, too.

What pulls the movie down for me though is Luke's unconvincing insistence that he can't escape his job. It's not even that he really wants to escape it. He clearly loves it and simply refuses to give it up. But what's never clear to me is why he feels that way. He has a lot going on in his life including his family and two women who care deeply about him: a Memphis nightclub singer (Smith) and local girl Roxie (Knight). He cares enough about all of these people to want to keep them at a distance where they won't be hurt by his occupation, but not so much that he's willing to give it up and do something different with his life. That would be a great conflict to explore if I better understood what's keeping him behind the wheel in the first place.

Rating: 3 out of 5 proto-Duke Boys.

While the City Sleeps (1956)

Who's In It: Dana Andrews (Laura, Night of the Demon), Rhonda Fleming (Spellbound, Out of the Past), George Sanders (Foreign Correspondent, Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake), Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach, The Outlaw), Vincent Price (His Kind of Woman, House of Wax), Sally Forrest (Son of Sinbad), John Drew Barrymore (Drew Barrymore's dad), and Ida Lupino (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes).

What It's About: The heads (including Sanders and Mitchell) of three branches of a media empire compete to catch a serial killer (Barrymore) in order to impress their new boss (Price) and win the top spot in his reorganization.

How It Is: I love how complicated the movie is. Like how the general plot description above doesn't even include the main characters, Ed (Andrews) and his girlfriend Nancy (Forrest). Ed is a TV news commentator in the same media company that the others work for, but he doesn't want the new position for himself and throws his connections and investigative skills behind his friend Jon Day Griffith (Mitchell). Unfortunately for Nancy (who works for George Sanders' character, Mark Loving), part of Ed's plan is using her as bait for the serial killer. And if that's not betrayal enough, Ed's not exactly resistant when Loving throws his own girlfriend, columnist Mildred Donner (Lupino) at Ed. So there are multiple dramas playing out at the same time: who'll get the top spot, will the killer be stopped, can Ed and Nancy's relationship survive it all, and do I even want it to?

Noir is all about flawed characters, but there's flawed and then there's butthead, and Ed falls into the latter category. He asks Nancy's permission to use her in his trap, but he does it after he's already planted the bait for the killer to see. And after he drunkenly makes out with Mildred, he plays the victim when Nancy gets upset. Sally Forrest is lovely in the role though and I believe that Nancy is smitten with Ed, so I end up rooting for them to work it out. But it's a struggle.

The rest of the film is super compelling and strong, though, with great performances all around. Rhonda Fleming is a standout as Vincent Price's wife (who's having an affair with one of the candidates and scheming to have him win the job) and Price once again solidifies my position that film noir Price is better than horror Price.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 intrepid reporters.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Who's In It: Robert Mitchum (The Lusty Men, Angel Face), Shelley Winters (Winchester '73, The Poseidon Adventure), and Lillian Gish (The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance).

What It's About: A serial killer (Mitchum) turns his attention to a widow (Winters) and her two kids, thinking that one of them must know the location of some money hidden by their deceased husband/father.

How It Is: A stylish thriller with the emphasis on "stylish;" often to a fault. The story is great and some of the performances are also great (particularly Mitchum and Gish), but I'm not always sure what Charles Laughton is up to in his one and only directing credit.

Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez create some stunningly gorgeous shots and I love the use of Harry's (Mitchum) singing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" to build dread. What I don't like is the way the film rushes through some elements. Some of that's a script problem. Willa (Winters) falls for Harry at a ridiculous, unconvincing speed, for example, but there are multiple points where I'm totally lost about why someone is behaving the way they are. Pearl's (Sally Jane Bruce) reactions to Harry are equally mystifying. 

I also don't like a lot of the editing. There's a cool sequence where people are talking about how Willa needs a man and the dialogue is cleverly intercut with shots of Harry's train in transit, but the cuts themselves are matter-of-fact and artless. Every step of the way The Night of the Hunter is trying cool things and I appreciate that, but only about a third of them are successful.

Rating: 3 out of 5 creepy clergymen.

Witness to Murder (1954)

Who's In It: Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity, The Big Valley), George Sanders (The Saint Strikes Back, Rebecca), and Gary Merrill (All About Eve, Mysterious Island).

What It's About: An interior decorator (Stanwyck) sees a murder take place through her apartment window and her obsession with catching the killer (Sanders) threatens her sanity and her new relationship with the investigating police detective (Merrill).

How It Is: Barbara Stanwyck is usually strong and I'm always a big fan of George Sanders, so I had high hopes for this variation on the Rear Window theme. Not that it's borrowing directly from Rear Window since it was released a few months before Hitchcock's film, but it was one of those Tombstone/Wyatt Earp or Armageddon/Deep Impact scenarios where similar films happened to come out uncomfortably close to each other. At any rate, I had every reason for high expectations for this grittier version of the concept.

Unfortunately, all the main characters do dumb and/or unbelievable things in order to keep the story moving. Merrill's Larry Mathews is a horrible detective, from his sloppy investigation of the alleged crime scene to his revealing the witness' identity to the suspect and on to his dating the witness. Merrill is an affable actor, but his pleasantness only makes Mathews appear that much more befuddled and ineffectual.

Stanwyck's Cheryl Draper starts off okay. Thanks to Mathews' incompetence, she at first questions what she saw and then decides to investigate on her own just to make sure she's not seeing things. But as she uncovers more and as the police continue to dismiss her, she gets weirdly panicky, which of course makes everyone dismiss her even more. I always hate scenes in any movie where a character thrashes around and screams about how sane they are. By the end of the movie, she's completely unstable, but I never believed any of the steps to her getting that way.

As for Sanders' Albert Richter, his motive for the murder Draper witnessed is ridiculous. There's some nonsense about his philosophy of violence (he's even written a manifesto about it that the police are happy to ignore) and the woman he killed was simply a poor girlfriend who was in the way of his aspirations of marrying a wealthy woman. What it comes down to is that he found it easier to murder her than break up with her.

Witness to Murder should have been a great showdown between Stanwyck and Sanders, but the script is so awkward about putting them into combat that I was never able to get into it.

Rating: 2 out of 5 dogged designers.

Angel Face (1953)

Who's In It: Robert Mitchum (Holiday Affair, His Kind of Woman), Jean Simmons (the original Blue Lagoon, The Big Country), and Jim Backus (Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town, His Kind of Woman).

What It's About: A man (Mitchum) is drawn into the world of a poor little rich girl (Simmons) who at best craves drama and at worst may be trying to murder her step-mother.

How It Is: I'm a big fan of Jean Simmons, so it was tough to watch her play such a miserable character. She does it well though and I was sucked into the story of her relationship with Mitchum's Frank.

Frank is a complicated character himself. He's dating a woman named Mary (Mona Freeman), but insists that he's a romantic "free agent" and Mary acknowledges this, even if she doesn't fully accept it. So he's not a great guy, but he's also not exactly doing anything wrong when he starts to spend more and more time with Simmons' Diane. And I like that he's smart enough to recognize Diane's behavior as troubling.

His problem is that he trusts his detachment to protect him from whatever Diane's planning. He always leaves himself an exit from her, thinking that he can walk away at any time, but he underestimates her intelligence and determination. In it's own, noirish way, Angel Face has a strong feminist message for womanizing men.

There's a part late in the movie where Frank's true flaw is clearly revealed. Like I said, he's not a great guy, but he's not an awful person, either, and there's a lot that I admire in him. He's smart, and even if he's determined not to commit to anyone, then at least he's up front about it. But while he insists on being free to hang out (and make out) with Diane, it becomes more and more evident that he wants to keep Mary on the hook as well. And he resents it when she starts showing interest in their mutual friend Bill (Kenneth Tobey).

At one point, after Frank has been damaged by Diane and he's looking for comfort from Mary, he laments to her that he ever met Diane. Mary's response to him is great when she reminds him that Bill was also there when Frank and Diane met. Bill had the same opportunity as Frank to get pulled into Diane's web, but he resisted. Which means that Diane's not the problem in Frank and Mary's relationship; Frank is. It's a powerful revelation, powerfully stated.

(Footnote: I mentioned Backus in the cast, so I should follow up and say that he's not a big part of the movie. He has a minor, but important role as a lawyer, but it's Jim Backus, so it was worth mentioning.)

Rating: 3 out of 5 bummed out bluebloods

This Gal Hates Cepahlopods

By Pia Guerra.

Art Show: Kingship of the Apes

Posting ten images a week hasn't been helping me make headway against my backlog. In fact, I'm getting further and further behind. So to help me catch up, this week's a whopper.

Cabin Boy



By Pierre Joubert. [Illustrateurs]

Belit



By Mike Hawthorne. [ComicTwart]

Kitty Pryde, Pirate



By Adam Withers. [Swing with Shad, a cool sea-themed blogger who's started his own set of Art Show posts.]

After the break: Way too much to list. Seriously. It's a butt-load of art.

Christa Faust's Choke Hold: The Sequel to Money Shot

Today's going to be kind of an odds-and-ends day, I can tell.

I haven't read Christa Faust's Money Shot yet, but I love the concept of a porn star's trying to solve the mystery around her own attempted murder. Now Hard Case Crime is announcing the sequel to that story (coming next February). In Choke Hold, Angel Dare is helping the Mixed Martial Arts-fighting son of a recently-murdered former co-star.

Movie News: Chinese Cowboys and Other Seekers of Fortune and Glory

Robin Hood 2



The first one's not out yet, but they're already talking sequel. Apparently, Ridley Scott envisions the first one as the origin story and the sequel would follow Robin through the height of his career, possibly all the way to the signing of the Magna Carta. Though Scott describes that as 17 years of events, so is he possibly thinking of multiple sequels?

All this concerns me a bit for this first movie. Especially the part where Scott implies that you won't really get that Russell Crowe is Robin Hood until the last few minutes. I'm now trying to adjust my expectations from Russell-Crowe-as-Robin-Hood to Russell-Crowe-in-a-generic-medieval-adventure-film. That does require a large shift in thinking, but there's no reason that I wouldn't enjoy Russell Crowe in a generic, medieval adventure film directed by Ridley Scott. [/Film]

The Good, the Bad, the Weird



Make sure to check out the trailer for this Chinese adaptation of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. As much as I respect the original, this looks like a lot of fun. An Eastern Western with heavy Indiana Jones influences. [Updated: A commenter let me know that - while it's set in China and was shot there - the movie's actually Korean. And not half bad either.]

Buy Indy's hat



Speaking of the archeologist, his hat - signed by Harrison Ford - is up for auction and there are still a couple of days left to bid (the auction closes shortly after midnight on Thursday morning). Current bid as I'm typing this is over $10,000, so make sure that checkbook's balanced.

Joss Whedon, Clash of the Titans, and a couple of alien invasions after the break.

Art Show: Waaaallttt!

The Black Buccaneer



By Mead Schaeffer. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Lost Island



By Greg Ham.

Centrosaurus brinkmani



By Mark Schultz [Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs]

GI Robot



By Declan Shalvey. [Comic Twart]

Bat Noir



By Andy Kubert. [DC Universe: The Source]

Daphne



By Kristin Palach. There seems to be a movement lately to proclaim Velma as the hot one, but Linda Cardellini aside, those people are crazy.

Hulk



By Otis Frampton.

Zatanna and the Demon



By Josh Eddings.

Mary Marvel



By Chris Samnee.

Painter of AHHHHHHH!



Artist Unknown, but Thomas Kinkade should be taking notes. [Brother Cal]

And Now the News: One Dino-Flick; Hold the Grudge

Michael Crichton pirate movie



I didn't know that Michael Crichton finished a pirate novel before he died. I guess it takes Steven Spielberg's making a movie out of it for me to learn these things.

The He-Lion's Lair



Pappy's got the story.

The Asylum's The Land That Time Forgot



I've quit paying attention to new Asylum releases, no matter how awesome they sound on paper. That's because I know that even if there's a great story to the movie (unlikely), they'll ruin it with cheap (if any) special effects.

So, Robert Hood's talking about me (however indirectly) when he says that The Land That Time Forgot "will not be forgiven by many net-critics for being made by the notorious Asylum — but at the risk of sounding like an apologist for the company, I don’t think such an attitude is fair."

He goes on to point out that the Asylum's crappy effects are still better than the goofy puppets in the Doug McClure version and similar B-movies. And of course he's absolutely right. My big beef with the Asylum is that they tend to market themselves as something better than they are, but really once you know what they are you can't say anymore that they tricked you. The question then is: taken for what you know Asylum films are, is it possible to still enjoy them on their own merits?

Hood obviously thinks so. He recommends the movie for people who "like dino-flicks — and don’t carry grudges." I certainly like dinosaur movies; I'm curious to see if I can get past my grudge. I think I'll try The Land That Time Forgot with a more open mind and see how it goes.

Pixar's Dinosaur movie?



/Film speculates that Pixar is probably working on a dinosaur-themed short film. They have to connect a lot of dots to come up with that, but it's some really strong dot-connecting. I wouldn't bet against them.

Diamond Bomb



Sleestak's having a lot of fun creating his own pulp heroine called Diamond Bomb. I love the world he's building for her and the art he's collected to support the illusion is fantastic.

The Anchor interview



My fellow Robot 6 member Tim O'Shea talks to Phil Hester about his new immortal-Viking demon-hunter series.

Sword of Shannara newspaper strip



Like Tom Spurgeon, I had no idea that there'd ever been a Sword of Shannara newspaper strip. Fortunately, Steven Thompson's got them all and is willing to share.

The Unauthorized but True Story of Adventures of Superman



If you pay constant attention to my sidebar (and why wouldn't you?) you've maybe noticed that I've been watching the old Adventures of Superman series off and on for a while. It's mostly cheesy and formulaic, but there's such love in it from everyone involved that you can't help but feel good while watching it. And some of the episodes are actually quite entertaining even from an objective point-of-view.

So it's cool that Tim O'Shea had another interview this week with Michael J. Hayde, author of a book about not only the George Reeves TV show, but also the radio program that preceded it. I want to know more about the TV show and I know nothing about the radio version, so I'll be needing this book.

No more Milestone at DC?



This is really, really disappointing.

I've been resisting talking about this.



I mean, a) it's hardly an adventure comic, and b) it's nothing more than a publicity stunt that - because it's set in the future - doesn't actually affect the status quo of Archie's never-changing world at all.

So, why am I discussing it now? Mainly because Glen Weldon's article about Imaginary Stories in general has helped me put the "event" in perspective. Since Archie's world really is never going to change - and he's never going to pick between Betty and Veronica - why not do a speculative story about what would happen if he did? This one happens to be about what would happen if he picked Veronica. I'd be shocked if they aren't already planning a second mini-series about what happens if he picks Betty. I'd rather read the Betty one, but since an in-continuity decision is impossible, I'm actually kind of pleased that they've come up with an alternative way of telling that story.