Black Angel (1946)

I would not describe Black Angel, released by Universal in 1946, as an obscure film noir but over the years it definitely has not received quite as much attention as it deserves.

It is based on a Cornell Woolrich novel and it was almost impossible to make a bad movie based on a Woolrich story. His stories just really lent themselves to cinematic adaptation. Woolrich was not a great prose stylist but he had a talent for viciously twisted plots and for creating an atmosphere of paranoia, despair and madness. When translated to the screen his stories just worked.

And there’s some impressive talent involved in this movie. Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre in a film noir. That’s a very promising start. Plus Broderick Crawford who did some fine noir work.

And then you notice that the movie was directed by Roy William Neill and you remember his Sherlock Holmes B-movies for Universal. A very competent director with the ability to get great results from limited budgets.

We get plenty of noir atmosphere right from the get-go. There’s a glamorous blonde and she’s a canary and we know she’s having man trouble. Then Dan Duryea makes his appearance. He seems edgy. That’s all Dan Duryea had to do to give a movie a serious noir vibe.

Immediately afterwards we get our first glimpse of Peter Lorre, looking prosperous and chomping a cigar. We just know he’s involved in something twisted and sinister.

The songbird is Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). On this night she has several visitors. One of them is Marty Blair (Dan Duryea) but she refuses to see him even when he explains to the hotel doorman that he’s her husband. Another is Kirk Bennett (John Phillips). Maybe there was another visitor, and maybe there wasn’t.

Mavis ends up dead and Kirk (who is one of life’s great saps) does every dumb thing that movie protagonists always do. He picks up the gun, getting his fingerprints all over it. Then he scrams, and gets seen by the maid while doing so. He has now ensured that he will be the prime suspect. Homicide Captain Flood (Broderick Crawford) isn’t a bad guy as cops go but the evidence against Kirk is overwhelming. Just to top things off he has a motive - Mavis was blackmailing him. He’s a married man and she was a married woman but they weren’t married to each other so it’s not hard to figure out the blackmail angle. It’s no surprise that Kirk gets arrested and convicted.

But all this is just the beginning of the story. Kirk’s wife Catherine (June Vincent) won’t accept that her husband is a murderer. She is determined to find the real murderer.

She has in her possession a clue. It’s easy to see why the police overlooked it. It appears to have no significance. She thinks it has no significance, until quite by accident she finds out that it’s actually crucial.

When you’re well into this movie you might find yourself thinking that it’s not very Woolrichian. Don’t worry. When the Woolrichian elements kick in they do so in big way. I can’t tell you any more than that without revealing spoilers.

If there’s a minor weakness in this movie it’s June Vincent. She’s not the greatest of noir leading ladies. She’s no Lizabeth Scott. But Catherine is after all a very ordinary woman faced with an extraordinary situation so June Vincent’s hesitant performance actually works fairly well.

Dan Duryea is of course terrific. The great thing about Duryea is that no-one could be more slimy and menacing and no-one did self-pity better but he could also project genuine charm and likeability. That works here. Marty Blair is a self-pitying drunk with a temper but we can’t be sure if he’s going to turn out to be a vicious killer or a really nice guy.

Peter Lorre oozes sinister menace as rich nightclub owner Marko who plays a vital role in the story. He gets what he wants. Including women. He wants Catherine. But this is Peter Lorre so there’s an extra something to his performance, a slight touch of ambiguity which suggests that maybe we shouldn’t take Marko at face value. It’s a fine performance.

And Black Angel has some suitably noirish visuals.

Black Angel belongs to the Woolrichian noir sub-genre and it’s a fine example of the breed. Highly recommended.

Ride Clear of Diablo (1954)

What’s better than an Audie Murphy western? How about an Audie Murphy western with Dan Duryea thrown in as a bonus? That’s what Universal-International’s 1954 Ride Clear of Diablo offers.

It starts with cattle rustling, which leaves a rancher named O’Mara and his son dead. O’Mara’s other son Clay (Audie Murphy) arrives from Denver to find the men who killed his family.

Clay persuades the local sheriff to deputise him. Clay wants to do some investigating. What he doesn’t know is that he’s being set up. He’s been advised to ride to Diablo to talk to a man named Whitey Kincade (Dan Duryea). In fact he’s been told to arrest Kincade on a murder charge.

The idea of the setup is that Whitey Kincade, a noted gunslinger, will surely kill Clay. The sheriff and the O’Mara family lawyer want Clay out of the way.

It should have been a fool-proof plan. Clay is an innocent youngster. He comes across as someone more suited to teaching Sunday school than taking on hardened gunmen. There’s just one flaw to the plan. Clay really is an innocent, but he’s also the fastest gun you ever saw and he’s one tough hombre when it comes to fistfights. Clay has no problem bringing in Whitey, much to the consternation of the sheriff and his accomplices.

Whitey is a bad guy and he’s a killer but he’s likeable. He takes a liking to Clay, and Clay gradually decides that Whitey isn’t so bad after all.

The plot of the movie is mostly concerned with Clay’s fruitless attempts to find his family’s killers. The attempts are fruitless because people he trusts keep feeding him false information.

People he trusts also keep trying to arrange to have him killed.

The audience knows from the beginning what is going on, and knows the identity of the killers. The suspense comes from the fact that Clay has no idea what’s going on and as a result he’s in constant danger.

Dan Duryea steals every scene he’s in. It’s am amusing totally over-the-top performance, even by Dan Duryea standards. Whitey is the most interesting character in the movie because he’s the only ambiguous character. He might turn out to be one of the good guys or one of the bad guys.

Audie Murphy is, as usual, very good.

Susan Cabot is reasonably good as the sheriff’s niece. She’s the love interest for Clay, with the complication that her uncle wants Clay dead although Clay hasn’t figured that out. Abbe Lane is fun as saloon girl Kate. She’s a bad girl, but she’s not evil.

Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea work beautifully together, with Murphy very understated while Duryea chews every piece of scenery he can get his hands on. They manage to make an unlikely friendship seem believable.

The supporting cast is adequate but this movie really badly needed a more memorable villain. All the villains are a bit on the colourless side.

Director Jesse Hibbs ended up working mostly in television but he did helm a later Audie Murphy movie, the excellent Ride a Crooked Trail. Ride Clear of Diablo isn’t quite as good. Don’t expect any spectacular visuals.

The 101 Films DVD is barebones but the transfer is pretty decent. The colours look OK.

Ride Clear of Diablo is really just a stock-standard competently made B-western with a revenge theme but Murphy and Duryea make it worth watching. It moves along quickly and there are some decent action scenes. Recommended for western fans.

Do You Know This Voice? (1964)

Do You Know This Voice? is a 1964 British crime thriller that attracted my attention because it was directed by Frank Nesbitt with a screenplay by Neil McCallum, the same team responsible for the excellent Walk a Tightrope made in the same year. And both these films star Dan Duryea, another equally compelling reason for me to seek this one out.

Do You Know This Voice? opens with a shocking crime. A small boy is kidnapped and murdered. A ransom call was made and initially that’s the only evidence that Superintendent Hume (Peter Madden) has to go on. And the telephone call was taped. Then it seems like the police have got a real break. There is a witness - someone who saw the telephone call being made. But she actually saw nothing. Or did she?

And more importantly, does the killer know that the witness saw nothing?

Rather daringly the movie reveals the identity of the killer very early on. In fact it reveals all the details of the mystery. Which doesn’t matter since although this movie seems at first to be a mystery that’s not actually what it’s about at all.

Once the answers to the mysteries are revealed it becomes a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Can the killer afford to leave the witness alive? But on the other hand can the killer afford to try to kill the witness, given that such an attempt is probably exactly what the police are hoping for.

So it’s a suspense movie, with the killer stalking the witness and the police stalking the killer, but it’s not quite a conventional suspense movie. For one thing, it’s not actually the killer that the witness saw, or didn’t see. It was a guilty party, but not the guilty party. And it almost veers into Hitchcock black comedy territory, as the killer’s attempts to eliminate the witness are frustrated by an endless series of miscalculations and bad luck. If it’s intended to be black comedy then it’s very black indeed (but then Hitchcock’s black comedy could be very very black so I still think that this is what this movie is trying for).

It’s no spoiler to reveal that Mr Hopta (Dan Duryea) is the killer and his wife (played by Gwen Watford) is his accomplice. The witness is his next door neighbour, Mrs Marotta (Ida Miranda). This is all laid out at a very early stage. Apart from the suspense the real core of the movie is the relationship between Hopta and his wife. Are they reluctant killers? Even accidental killers? Were they driven by desperation? Did they really think they could pull off their scheme without anybody getting hurt?

And now that they’re in it up to their necks what are they going to do? Are they going to stick together? Do they have the coolness and the smarts to somehow get out of the mess they’re in? And can they get out of the mess by killing Mrs Marotta?

You would think that there is no way a child killer could possibly be a sympathetic protagonist. But Hopta is so utterly hopeless at everything he does that maybe he really did have no intention at all of harming the child. Maybe it was just a tragic accident. Or maybe it’s the kind of tragic accident that happens to someone who has gone through life in a state of childish irresponsibility. And what do you do if you’re married to such a man and you really love him?

So it’s a movie that tries to be more than just a suspense movie. I guess it’s a kind of dark psychological thriller in which we see what happens to a guy who really sees to be a nice guy but with a very serious character flaw. So there’s a definite film noir angle here.

By 1964 Dan Duryea wasn’t exactly being deluged with good rôles but when a good rôle like this did come along there’s no doubt that he could still deliver the goods. Isa Miranda had a long and busy career. She had been a major star in Europe. She does a very fine job as Mrs Marotta. Gwen Watford is excellent as Mrs Hopta. These are really the only three characters who matter in the movie and they’re all rather interesting. They’re all people who have a lot going on beneath the surface. These three very fine performances are the keys to the movie’s success.

Network’s Region 2 DVD is barebones but boasts an excellent anamorphic transfer.

Do You Know This Voice? is intriguing and slightly offbeat and it’s highly recommended.

Walk a Tightrope (1964)

Walk a Tightrope is a low budget 1964 British murder mystery with a nicely twisted premise which seems like it’s going to be rather intriguing. The good news is that it delivers on its promise.

Having a bad day at work is something that happens to everyone. Even hired killers like Carl Lutcher (Dan Duryea). Lutcher is having a really bad day. It was such a simple job but now it’s blown up in his face. It’s not just that things did not go quite as expected - things took an absolutely bewildering turn.

Lutcher is not the only one who is bewildered. It seems that everyone involved is confused and disturbed. Including the victim’s widow. Everyone is adamant about what happened but no-one’s story agrees with anyone else’s and no-one’s story makes sense.

The nice thing is that it’s not only the characters who are unsure of what is really happening. The audience is baffled as well. Baffled, but in a good way. We really don’t know which story to believe. A murder has been committed. We don’t know why. We know who did the killing but was someone else behind it?

As soon as we start to think that one of the people involved is telling a pretty plausible story something happens to plunge us into doubt again.

We also see the seeds of suspicion starting to plant themselves in the minds of various characters, and there’s a growing sense of paranoia.

When the major plot twists do kick in they’re deliciously nasty.

These were the days when producers of low-budget British movies liked to use imported has-been American stars whose careers were sufficiently on the downward slope that they would work for peanuts. Surprisingly it’s something that more often than not worked very well, since those superannuated Hollywood stars were often very fine actors. In this case we have Dan Duryea whose career was severely in the doldrums. Duryea was however a great actor and at a time when he was grateful for any work this was an excellent part that suited him down to the ground. He makes the most of it. Duryea was always marvellous at playing mean nasty manipulative characters who were also slightly pathetic. By the time he made this one the years were visibly starting to catch up with him and that adds a certain poignancy to his performance. Carl Lutcher is contemptible but he’s such a sorry loser we almost feel sorry for him.

Patricia Owens as the widow of the murder victim has a very demanding rôle. She has to make Ellen Shepherd sympathetic but we have to be not quite sure of her. Owens carries this off with considerable confidence. The supporting players are very solid as they usually were in even cheap British movies in those days. Trevor Reid manages to make Inspector MacMitchell a slight variation on the usual run of movie Scotland Yard policemen - he’s like a slightly dotty but likeable old uncle.

Richard Leech does a good job as the best friend who’s as ambiguous as all the other characters. Special mention should be made of Shirley Cameron’s touching performance as Lutcher’s devoted girlfriend Maisie.

Frank Nesbitt directed and did so quite competently. It’s one of only three features he directed but one of those three was another murder mystery with Dan Duryea Do You Know This Voice? which I’m now more than a little anxious to see, especially since Neil McCallum scripted both films.

Network’s Region 2 DVD is barebones but the anamorphic transfer is lovely. The movie was shot in black-and-white and it looks terrific.

Walk a Tightrope is a well above average murder mystery with a cleverly constructed plot and fine performances. Highly recommended and if you’re a Dan Duryea fan it’s obviously a must-see.

The Underworld Story (1950)

The Underworld Story is a 1950 crime thriller directed by Cy Endfield. Some people regard this as a film noir although I have no idea why. It’s more of an overheated melodrama.

Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) is a newspaper reporter with a bad reputation (and to get a bad reputation in that line of business you really have to work hard at it). His links with gangster  Carl Durham (Howard Da Silva) eventually get him fired. He finds he can’t get a job as a reporter anywhere in the city. In desperation he buys a half interest in a small town newspaper. His new partner is Cathy Harris (Gale Storm).

Cathy quickly finds out just what a louse Mike Reese is. She’s just about to give him his marching orders when the biggest story in the Lakeville Sentinel’s history breaks. The daughter-in-law of fabulously wealthy press mogul E.J. Stanton (Herbert Marshall) has just been murdered, in Lakeville! Mike manages to persuade Cathy that this is a story that she has to let him run with.

We know from the start that Diane Stanton was murdered by her disturbed and neurotic husband Clark Stanton (Gar Moore). Clark however has no trouble persuading his father to cover up the crime for him. As luck would have it Diane’s black maid Molly (Mary Anderson) vanished at the time of the murder so it’s easy to pin the murder on her.

Mike now sees his chance. He decides to use the Sentinel to crusade on Molly’s behalf, having discovered that the nice warm friendly people of Lakeville all like her and believe she is probably innocent. Mike launches a fund to raise money to pay a hot-shot trial lawyer to defend her.

In fact Mike is simply using the case for his own purposes, to boost the Sentinel’s circulation and to line his own pockets. He and the shady lawyer intend to split the money fifty-fifty.

Then E.J. Stanton goes into action, turning the townspeople against Mike’s campaign and threatening the Sentinel’s survival. It now turns out that the nice warm friendly people of Lakeville were actually hate-filled bigots all along and they turn against Molly completely.

By this time it has been established that Mike Reese is a lying conniving crooked journalist who would sell his own mother for a story. And now, suddenly and for no reason whatsoever, he magically turns into a genuine crusading journalist who cares only for truth and justice.

This is an all-too-typical feature of the ham-fisted screenplay by Henry Blankfort. Nothing seems to matter except using the film as an excuse for some very heavy-handed preaching. The characters are threadbare caricatures whose personalities can be entirely reversed in a heartbeat. The plot is melodramatic and emotionally manipulative.

The acting is mostly poor. Gar Moore is quite embarrassing as Clark Stanton. He didn’t have much of a career and it’s easy to see why. Gale Storm is harmless enough.Herbert Marshall tries hard but it’s obvious he doesn’t believe in the character he’s playing.

Dan Duryea tries to save the movie with a typically energetic performance combining sleaziness and breeziness and he is at least entertaining to watch. The fact that his character isn’t convincing is the fault of the screenwriter, not Duryea.

This is a great movie to watch if you enjoy movies about evil cigar-chomping rich people persecuting  the poor oppressed masses. The evil rich people are of course all degenerate as well as evil. You get some half-baked Freudianism as well.

On the plus side there’s some great noirish cinematography in the early sections. The opening sequence is superbly done.

I caught The Underworld Story on cable. It’s available on made-on-demand DVD in the Warner Archive series but I wouldn’t recommend buying this one unless you’re a very keen Dan Duryea completist.