Night Moves (1975)

Night Moves is a 1975 private eye thriller. Whether it qualifies as a neo-noir remains to be seen but that label has been affixed to it at times.

Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a down-at-heel private eye. He’s not at the bottom of his profession but he’s a long way from the top. He gets by. He has a cute wife. He’s not what you would call a loser.

Or maybe it would be truer to say that he’s not a loser yet, but the potential is there.

He’s been hired by a faded middle-aged former starlet to find her missing teenaged daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith). Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) was never more than a minor starlet. It’s clear that she was one of those Hollywood actresses who gave her best performances on the casting couch. She married a producer. More husbands followed.

Harry has troubles of his own. One of the disadvantages of being a private eye is that you notice things that you’d be better off not noticing and and you make connections you’d be better off not making. For example if your wife is having an affair you’re going to know about it. And Harry’s wife is definitely having an affair.

Harry is not at all happy about this. Harry is a guy who seems a bit on edge at the best of times. A bit inclined to fly off the handle.

Harry thinks he has a lead on the missing girl. She might be with her stepfather Tom Iverson (John Crawford) in Florida. He flies down to Florida. Tom has left the rat race. He does some charter boat and charter plane stuff. He’s really a glorified beach bum. He lives with his ex-hooker girlfriend Paula.

Delly is indeed there. She does not want to return to her mother whom she hates.

Delly looks like Miss Junior Femme Fatale 1975. She’s a nice girl but she’s wild and she’s far from innocent.

Then comes a plot twist right out of left field. Delly is doing some skin diving and finds a wrecked plane. With a body in it. Of course that has nothing to do with the case. It was obviously an accidental plane crash and there are plenty of light plane crashes.

The case is now solved. Harry can return to California. Maybe he can patch up his marriage. Perhaps he should give up the private eye business. He’s 40 and maybe his life needs to change direction. He needs to think. Then he receives a cryptic communication from Delly. And a piece of information about her. And yet another piece of information that suggests some interesting connections. Harry may be thinking of giving the game away but he still thinks like a private eye. Give him a puzzle and he’ll try to solve it. Especially if it involves someone of whom he is fond. Not a lover, just someone for whom he developed an odd affection. This case is not over after all.

I don’t think this is a neo-noir at all. It has some dark moments but a neo-noir requires more than that. It requires specific ingredients. Those ingredients are lacking here. Harry does not fit the mould of a noir protagonist.

There are four women all of whom could be dangerous but not one of them is a classic femme fatale. The first is disqualified because she’s so obvious that even the dumbest schmuck could see through her. The second is just selfish and shallow. The third has some femme fatale tendencies but Harry does not get seriously involved with her which disqualifies her as a femme fatale. The fourth has very definite femme fatale potential but Harry doesn’t get involved with her in any way, either emotionally or sexually. This movie is not structured like a neo-noir. It does not have a plot driven by lust. In fact the plot isn’t driven by anything in particular. There’s no obsessiveness. It’s just a PI who gets stubborn when faced by a puzzling case. The kind of plot you’d expect in a very average crime thriller.

It also lacks a neo-noir feel. The feel is more like a two-part episode of one of the popular TV PI series of the day such as Mannix or Harry O. Night Moves has no particular visual style. I don’t even see it as an homage to the great PI movies of the 40s. Night Moves is very very 70s, but not in a really interesting way.

All of the female characters are underwritten and Harry’s relationships with them are entirely undeveloped.

I have to be honest and state that I’ve seen three Arthur Penn movies and I’ve disliked all of them. I’m also not the biggest Gene Hackman fan. He’s appropriately cast here and he’s competent but no more. The best performance here comes from Melanie Griffith in her film debut. It’s a tricky role. She has to make Delly bratty, but not too bratty. She does a fine job. She actually understands subtlety.

Night Moves is nothing special, just a reasonably entertaining very straightforward PI thriller. A harmless time-killer. Worth a look but I wouldn’t make a huge effort to seek it out.

Murder Me, Murder You (1983 TV-movie)

Murder Me, Murder You (1983) is one of two Mike Hammer TV-movies which served as pilots for the successful TV series.

Stacy Keach plays Hammer in both the TV-movies and the series.

My full review can be found at Cult TV Lounge.

Blonde for a Day (1946)

Blonde for a Day is a 1946 private eye thriller featuring Mike Shayne.

The Mike Shayne Private eye thrillers of Brett Halliday (a pseudonym used by Davis Dresser) began publication in 1939 and were successful enough to attract the attention of Hollywood. 20th Century-Fox made seven Mike Shayne B-movies between 1940 and 1942, all with Lloyd Nolan as Shayne. PRC then made five more films in 1946 and 1947 with Hugh Beaumont taking over the lead role.

The 20th Century-Fox and PRC films are best regarded as two distinct franchises with rather different flavours. The Fox movies tend to be lighthearted semi-comic crime films. The PRC movies have a slightly tougher grittier feel. For my money Lloyd Nolan’s interpretation of the role is a bit too whimsical. Hugh Beaumont takes a more no-nonsense approach to the role which I much prefer.

Blonde for a Day is number three in the PRC series. Crusading reporter Tim Rourke (Paul Bryar) has been publishing hard-hitting exposés on a crime syndicate. His editor, Walter Bronson (Frank Ferguson) fears he’s going too far. Tim figures he’ll soon be out of a job. And gambling boss Hank Brenner (Mauritz Hugo) might be tempted to try to shut him up for good. Tim sends a wire to his old buddy, San Francisco PI Mike Shayne, asking for some help.

Somebody does go gunning for Tim Rourke.

Mike finds evidence in Tim’s apartment that he was visited by two blondes on the day of the shooting. One of the blondes might possibly have been Bronson’s wife. She’s been carrying a torch for Tim for a while.

So there are two possible motives for the shooting, the gambling exposés and the fact that Tim has been a bit too friendly with the boss’s wife. We will later find out that there’s a blackmail angle as well.

There have been other murders, and a blonde is suspected.

There’s a plethora of blondes in this movie. Blondes always mean trouble.

One of those blondes turns up dead.

Hugh Beaumont can trade wise-cracks effectively and he makes Shayne seem like just enough of a tough guy to be a convincing PI. Kathryn Adams, who was married to High Beaumont at the time, is good as Shayne’s feisty likeable secretary/girlfriend Phyllis (and she gets a chance to show that she can throw a pretty good punch). Cy Kendall is solid as the perpetually grumbling Detective Lieutenant Pete Rafferty.

The supporting players are all perfectly adequate.

Compared to major studio B-pictures PRC’s productions were very low budget but that works to the advantage of these PRC Mike Shayne films. They lack glamour but they have a slightly seedy feel and after all the world of the private eye is pretty seedy.

Don’t expect a spectacular action finale. Not on a PRC budget.

This is a solid unassuming B-movie that moves along nicely and it delivers entertainment value. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed the first two PRC Mike Shayne movies, Murder Is My Business (1946) and Larceny in Her Heart (1946). I’ve also reviewed some of the Fox Shayne movies, including the best of them, Blue, White and Perfect (1942) and Sleepers West (1941) which is not too bad.

Three On a Ticket (1947)

Three On a Ticket was the fourth of the five Mike Shayne PI thriller B-movies made by PRC in 1946-47, with Hugh Beaumont as Mike. Prior to this Twentieth Century Fox had made seven Mike Shayne movies with Lloyd Nolan. Despite the much lower budgets I actually prefer the PRC films. They’re closer in feel to the novels, they’re a bit grittier, they have less annoying comic relief and while I like Lloyd Nolan as an actor I think Beaumont was a better fit for the role.

The Mike Shayne private eye novels were published under the name Brett Halliday, a pseudonym used by Davis Dresser. Dresser wrote the early novels in the series while the later novels were written by an assortment of ghost writers. Mike Shayne is a pretty standard fictional PI and the books have a fairly hardboiled vibe.

Three On a Ticket begins when a guy walks into Mike Shayne’s office and promptly drops dead. A bullet in the guts can do that to you. Mike and his faithful secretary Phyllis (Cheryl Walker) are rather disconcerted. Mike doesn’t want the cops to know he was in the office at the time, mostly because the first thing he did was to conceal two vital pieces of evidence. One of them is a baggage claim ticket.

The dead guy was another PI, Jim Lacy. Mike used to be vaguely acquainted with him but preferred to keep his distance because of Lacy’s unsavoury reputation.

Dead guys can mean trouble but Mike’s next visitor is a very Iive blonde and they always mean trouble. The blonde is Helen Brimstead (Louise Currie) and she wants to hire Mike to do a very simple job. All he has to do is kill her husband.

Murder is not one of the services Mike provides for his clients but he strings her along because she tells him that Jim Lacy recommended him. Obviously the blonde is mixed up in whatever led to Lacy’s murder and Mike wants the answers to that. The blonde spins a yarn about having married a hoodlum named Mace Morgan. Now she wants to marry a rich respectable guy and Mace is blackmailing her.

All sorts of people seem to know about that baggage claim ticket, they all suspect Mike has it stashed somewhere and they all want it. The Feds want it as well. The blonde has been involved with some tough characters and they definitely want it.

The plot isn’t dazzling but it has a few reasonably decent twists.

Hugh Beaumont plays Shayne as a likeable rogue. Cheryl Walker as Phyllis is feisty. Louise Currie as Helen is a reasonably effective femme fatale type (although of course we don’t know for sure if Helen is a bad girl or if she just looks like one). The supporting players are adequate.

This is a PRC movie so it looks cheap (because it was) and it’s a bit rough around the edges) but it moves along briskly.

Sam Newfield may not have been a great director but he was very competent when it came to making B-movies on tight budgets.

Three On a Ticket is a solid enjoyable B-picture. Recommended.

All five PRC Shayne movies are included in DFVD set from Classic Flix. The transfers are nothing to get excited about but they’re perfectly watchable.

I’ve reviewed a couple of the earlier PRC Mike Shayne movies - the excellent Murder Is My Business (1946) and Larceny in Her Heart (1946). I’ve also reviewed the 1945 Mike Shayne novel by Brett Halliday Murder Is My Business.

I, the Jury (1953)

I, the Jury was the first movie adaptation of a Mickey Spillane novel. It’s a movie with a less than stellar reputation and it does have its problems. It also has some very real virtues.

It starts with the murder of a guy named Jack. Jack and Mike Hammer had been buddies in the army. Jack had saved Hammer’s life. Hammer doesn’t forget stuff like that. He’s going to avenge Jack’s murder no matter what the price. This is typical Spillane stuff - giving Hammer a personal stake in a case. Hammer is a dangerous guy anyway but when he has a personal grudge to settle he’s extra dangerous.

Hammer’s pal, Homicide Captain Pat Chambers (Preston Foster) knows this. He’s going to set things up so the killer will go after Mike. That will flush the killer out into the open. Pat doesn’t feel guilty about this. Mike knows the score. Mike wants the killer to come after him.

The only lead is a party. The murderer was probably at that party.

Mike is sure that Jack had stumbled onto something really big. A major racket.

In the course of this case Hammer encounters quite a few women. He knows how dangerous dames can be. Jack’s ex-junkie girlfriend Myrna (Frances Osborne) probably knows something. Maybe the Bellamy twins, Mary and Esther (played by real-life identical twin sisters Tani and Dran Seitz), know something. They’re very very rich and a bit on the decadent side. Mary is a nymphomaniac.

More interesting to Mike is drop-dead gorgeous lady psychoanalyst Charlotte Manning (Peggie Castle). He’s not interested in being psychoanalysed by her but he would be interested in doing other things with her. She’s quite a woman.

There’s a racketeer named Kalecki (Alan Reed) and his young college student friend Hal Kines (Bob Cunningham). There’s a crazy guy named Bobo (Elisha Cook Jr). There’s another racketeer. There’s a girl named Elaine. She’s a dance instructress. There’s the couple running the dance studio. There’s her dad, a country vet who is bitter because his daughter has gone bad. All of these people could be mixed up in whatever racket it was that Jack had uncovered.

The plot twists and turns in ways that are not always satisfactory. We’ll get back to that later. Suffice to say that if you worry too much about the plot your head will start spinning. It doesn’t matter. You can enjoy this movie if you just wallow in the atmosphere and the visuals.

I, the Jury was shot in 3-D. I have no idea how it looks in 3-D but the flat version on Blu-Ray looks fabulous. As you would expect. The cinematography is by John Alton, possibly the greatest cinematographer of all time. And since it’s done by Alton it looks very very noir.

Biff Elliot’s performance as Mike Hammer produces sharply divided opinions. I like it. He’s very good good at getting across Hammer’s bull in a china shop approach to investigating (basically you just start throwing punches until somebody starts talking) and Hammer’s unsophisticated working-class background. Hammer is the kind of guy who likes hot dogs, drinking beer, ball games and going to the fights. He has a sensitive side but he’s very much a rough diamond.

Peggie Castle plays Dr Armstrong as a very glamorous lady who might or might not be very dangerous. As the Bellamy twins the Seitz twins ooze sex. On the whole the acting is fine.

The big problem here is the Production Code. Spillane revitalised the PI genre by adding a lot more violence, sex, sleaze and general depravity. Adapting his books whilst staying with the rigid guidelines of the Production Code was simply impossible.

And it is a real problem with this movie. Every single element that drives the plot was forbidden by the Code. As a result the plot of the movie makes zero sense. The motivations of the characters make zero sense. At one point there’s a double murder but it comes totally out of left field with no possible motive or reason. All it does is make the movie more confusing. Of course there was a reason for the double murder but the script wasn’t allowed even to offer a hint as to what the motive might be. Elaine’s father is incredibly angry and bitter about what has happened to his daughter, but when we meet the daughter she seems totally respectable and has a totally legitimate respectable job. The script wasn’t even permitted to offer a hint as to why her father thought she was a girl gone wrong.

When we get the final revelation of the nature of the major racket that is behind everything it’s simply ridiculous. We have to believe that Hammer is justified in acting as an avenging angel but the criminal activities are actually pretty innocuous and certainly not evil. We have to believe that Hammer’s desire for vengeance is justified but in fact the chief villain hasn’t really done anything particularly evil. The most unintentionally funny moment is when the cops raid the dance studio. The movie has gone to elaborate lengths to make it crystal clear that this is a totally respectable dance studio and that there is absolutely nothing illegal or immoral going on there. And then we see about thirty cops arrive to raid the place. Are they looking for people doing the tango without a licence?

Of course in the book it all makes sense. The criminal conspiracy is all about drug trafficking and prostitution. But the Production Code Authority would not allow the movie even to acknowledge that such shocking things exist.

You get the impression when watching this film that screenwriter Harry Essex was desperately trying to add subtle hints and suggestions of subtext in order to make sense of everything but that at every step he was thwarted by the Production Code Authority. This is another case of a potentially great movie wrecked by the Production Code.

There is still a lot to enjoy here. Biff Elliot’s interesting take on Hammer, Peggie Castle’s sizzling performance, Alton’s superlative cinematography, great noir atmosphere, are all reasons to watch. The fight scenes are frequent, brutal and extremely well done. I recommend this movie despite its very real flaws.

The Cult Epics Blu-Ray looks great.

I’ve reviewed Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury, the 1947 source novel. I’ve reviewed The Girl Hunters (1963), with Spillane himself playing Mike Hammer. And the surprisingly gritty Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-60) TV series.

Marlowe (1969)

Marlowe is a 1969 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister, with James Garner as Philip Marlowe. Stirling Silliphant wrote the screenplay and he obviously had the right credentials. It was directed by Paul Bogart, a guy with a very undistinguished career spent mainly in television.

What’s odd about Chandler is that there weren’t a huge number of adaptations of his novels back in the 40s but between 1969 and 1978 there were no less than four, varying wildly in both style and quality. They covered the spectrum from the sublime to the ridiculous (I’m afraid I’m not a fan of Robert Altman’s eccentric The Long Goodbye).

The Little Sister just happens to be my favourite Chandler novel.

These later adaptations all faced one problem - whether to go for a period setting or whether to put Marlowe in a contemporary setting. The 1975 Farewell, My Lovely was the only one that went for a period setting and it’s the best of the four. The 1969 Marlowe goes for a contemporary setting so early on we have Marlowe encountering hippies. There’s plenty of late 60s California decadence as Marlowe finds himself encountering the world of television.

James Garner was a pretty obvious choice to play Marlowe. Obviously Robert Mitchum would have been better but Mitchum had to wait until 1975 by which time he had to play an ageing Marlowe (which he did to perfection). But Garner did have the charisma and the role was well within his range.

Philip Marlowe is working on a very trivial case. A small-town girl from Kansas, Orfamay Quest (Sharon Farrell), wants her missing brother Orrin to be found. Marlowe has a lead but then there’s a corpse with an ice-pick in it and Marlowe isn’t keen on those kinds of cases so he wants to drop it.

Unfortunately there’s soon a second corpse, and a second ice-pick.

There are also some photographs, of the sort usually described as compromising. There’s obviously some blackmail going on. The photographs lead Marlowe to TV sitcom star Mavis Wald (Gayle Hunnicutt). Marlowe figures she’s in a jam and would like to hire a private detective to get her out of the mess but she’s not interested.

Someone else wants Marlowe off the case and hires a king fu expert (played by Bruce Lee in an odd, out-of-place but amusing cameo) to persuade him to back off.

The ice picks worry Marlowe. Rubbing guys out in that manner is a trademark of big-time gangster Sonny Steelgrave (H.M. Wynant).

Marlowe has a lot of women to deal with in this case and they’re all probably lying to him and they’re all potentially dangerous. There’s Mavis, there’s her stripper best friend Dolores (Rita Moreno) and there’s Orfamay. The connections between these women may not be what they seem to be. None are played as conventional femmes fatales which is refreshing. Marlowe also has a gangster to worry about, and a doctor with a possibly dubious past. And there’s missing brother Orrin who was mixed up in something shady. There are half a dozen quite convincing murder suspects so it’s no wonder Marlowe is bewildered.

The tone is somewhat erratic. The opening scene with the hippies comes across as a desperate attempt to pander to a youth audience. Chandler was not really a writer of noir fiction (although a lot of people think he was) and the only Chandler adaptation that comes close to being genuinely film noir is the 1975 Farewell, My Lovely. Chandler was however decidedly hardboiled (which is not the same thing) and Marlowe just doesn’t achieve that feel. In fact at times it seems like it’s trying to be tongue-in-cheek. Chandler could be very witty and amusing so that approach isn’t entirely wrong but this movie pushes it a bit too far.

We do have to address the question of plotting. There’s a popular perception that Chandler didn’t care about plotting. That simply isn’t true. Chandler saw himself as a writer of detective fiction and that’s a genre that requires a reasonably effective plot. Chandler put a lot of effort into his plots but they do tend to be very complicated and convoluted and sometimes confusing. That problem shows up in this movie as well. It’s not at all easy to keep track of what’s going on.

I don’t think that’s a major problem. Marlowe is supposed to be mystified and it doesn’t hurt if the audience is as well. As Marlowe slowly starts to make sense of the case we do as well, and we make the same wrong assumptions that Marlowe makes.

James Garner had huge success on television but was never a top-tier movie star. I suspect that’s because he made acting look easy. Critics like actors who make acting look hard. Critics also admire actors who seem to be having a miserable time. Critics are rather sad people. I’m quite OK with Garner’s easy-going performance here.

The other players are all pretty solid. Carroll O’Connor overacts less than usual as Homicide cop Lieutenant Christy French, who is (surprisingly) almost a nice guy. That’s something I like about this movie - the characters are not the stereotypes you’re expecting. Rita Moreno just about steals the picture with her very steamy strip-tease routine.

As director Paul Bogart does a perfectly competent job.

I have a few minor quibbles with Marlowe but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very nice transfer. It would be nice to see this movie get a Blu-Ray release - it’s worthy of re-evaluation.

I’ve reviewed the two Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies, the superb Farewell, My Lovely (1975) and the much less successful but still rather interesting The Big Sleep (1978).

The Big Sleep (1978)

I’ve always thought it was a shame that Robert Mitchum didn’t get to play Philip Marlowe back in the late 1940s/early 1950s. He did however get to play Marlowe in two movies in the 1970s, offering us a fascinating glimpse of what Marlowe might have become much later in life. The two 70s movies were Farewell, My Lovely in 1975 and The Big Sleep in 1978. It’s The Big Sleep with which we are concerned at the moment.

The odd thing is that most reviewers are puzzled firstly over why director Michael Winner would have dared to remake such a beloved classic and secondly why he chose to set his remake in 1970s London. I would have thought it was perfectly obvious that the decision to choose 1970s London was an entirely sensible attempt to distance this movie from the 1946 Howard Hawks version.

I have no problems with the updated setting. The danger of trying to make a neo-noir set in the 1940s is that you will end up with a movie that has that slightly phoney period movie look, and will also end up looking too pretty and too picturesque. Polanski got away with it with Chinatown in 1974 and I think Dick Richards got away with it in the 1975 Farewell, My Lovely but other 1970s remakes of movies from the 30s and 40s that try to reproduce the period settings do look overly pretty.

Winner makes no attempt whatsoever to reproduce the classic film noir look. He concentrates on trying instead to capture the film noir mood and the film noir thematic obsessions.

The movie follows Raymond Chandler’s novel reasonably closely. The novel has a notoriously convoluted and almost incomprehensible plot. Voiceover narration and flashbacks are used in a desperate attempt to make the plot understandable but it still defies comprehension.

Philip Marlowe, an ageing American private eye based in London, is hired by the frail elderly General Sternwood to deal with a blackmail threat. On his visit to the general’s house he meets the old man’s two daughters and decides, correctly, that they’re going to be trouble. The elder sister, Charlotte (Sarah Miles), is obviously scheming and dishonest and hiding lots of things. The younger daughter, Camilla (Candy Clark), practically tears Marlowe’s trousers off. As the movie progresses we find out that her first reaction upon meeting any man is to get him into bed immediately.

Camilla has been posing for nudie pictures for a sleazy bookseller. Marlowe finds her zonked out of her brain on drugs in a room with a dead man. She has no idea where she is.

Marlowe was not hired to find Charlotte’s missing husband Rusty but Marlowe is sure that that is what the general really wants him to do. Rusty supposedly ran off with the wife of gambling club owner Eddie Mars (Oliver Reed).

There are lots of murders. There are lots of suspects. Pretty much any of the characters could have committed any of the murders, for motives that remain obscure.

This version naturally has a degree of 1970s sleaze and relatively graphic violence.

Mitchum is as charismatic as ever. He was getting older but the 1970s proved to be an incredibly fruitful decade for him. In fact it’s difficult to think of any Hollywood actor who gave more great performances in the 70s than Mitchum.

The supporting cast is extraordinary. Oliver Reed, John Mills, Richard Boone (as a totally psychotic killer), Richard Todd, Harry James, Edward Fox, Joan Collins. All give interesting performances. Oliver Reed underplays which makes Eddie Mars seem even more sinister and dangerous. Joan Collins is delightfully sexy and wicked. James Stewart on the other hand is much too folksy. Richard Boone is just nuts and makes a character who is supposed to be frightening merely ridiculous.

The problem is the two actresses playing the key roles as the general’s daughter. Sarah Miles is ludicrously miscast and out of place and, fatally, there is zero sexual tension generated between Marlowe and Charlotte. Candy Clark’s performance as Camilla can only be described as bizarre. It’s just so wrong and so inappropriate that it’s morbidly fascinating.

There are a lot of things wrong with this movie but there are a lot of things that are right as well. It’s sufficiently entertaining and interesting that there’s no need even to try to understand what’s going on. It should be a disaster but in its own way it’s rather fun. It’s also amusing that the behaviour of the general’s daughters, which would have been scandalous enough to make blackmail plausible in the 1940s, would scarcely have raised eyebrows in the 70s. OK, Camilla poses for nudie pics and she’s frantically promiscuous and does drugs. In other words her behaviour is perfectly normal for the 70s. It all ends up making the movie a crazy 1940s/1970s mashup. I think it’s worth a look.

Shout! Factory have released both the 1975 Farewell, My Lovely and the 1978 The Big Sleep on a single Blu-Ray and both films look wonderful.

Chinatown (1974)

I think of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown as the first true neo-noir. There are those who consider Point Blank (1967) to be a neo-noir but Chinatown is the first such movie that really feels like a film noir. Until the end of the 1960s nobody (outside of a handful of French critics) had even heard of the term film noir. Then suddenly it became an obsession with critics and film scholars and cinephiles.

Chinatown ticks almost all of the noir boxes. There’s the atmosphere of corruption. There’s a slightly morally ambiguous protagonist who is out of his depth and getting in deeper all the time. There’s the femme fatale. There are no flashbacks but the seeds of the mystery lie in the past. There’s the sense of impending doom. You may not be sure which of the characters is likely to be doomed but you just know that really bad things are going to happen. There’s an atmosphere of obsessive and unhealthy eroticism.

Even the opening credits are done in a 1940s style. Of course Chinatown is also very much a 1940s-style hardboiled private eye movie (film noir and hard boiled crime were not the same although they overlapped a great deal).

On the other hand it’s not quite an actual film noir because it’s in colour. Polanski and cinematographer John A. Alonzo understood that you cannot reproduce the film noir visual style in colour, so they adopted a visual style which would work in colour. Everything is bathed in sunlight. They manage to make the California sunshine noirish. As the movie progresses the colour palette becomes darker and more subdued and more obviously noirish.

Chinatown is so much more successful than most neo-noirs because it’s totally lacking in fashionable irony. It isn’t trying to deconstruct film noir. It isn’t trying to play clever games with noir conventions. It isn’t interested in self-referential games. It’s not trying to mock the movies of the 40s. It stands in marked contrast to Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, made around the same time, which is guilty of all of those things.

Polanski understands the conventions of film noir and the hardboiled PI movie and he respects those conventions. Chinatown isn’t so much a neo-noir as a classic noir that happened to be made in the early 70s. It’s a classic film noir and it’s a movie of the 70s and it doesn’t feel like a cynical contrivance or an exercise in nostalgia.

The story is told rigidly from the point of view of PI Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). The viewer only knows what Jake knows. And Robert Towne’s script is littered with clever traps, with scenes that are going to mislead us. But Towne and Polanski never cheat. Everything we see is true, but both Jake and the audience are going to jump to obvious conclusions and in this movie those obvious conclusions will always turn out to be wrong.

It starts in the time-honoured fashion for private eye stories. Jake takes on a very routine case. Evelyn Mulwray hires him to find out if her husband is having an affair. Jake finds incontrovertible evidence that he is having an affair. Then comes the first twist. Things are not what they seem to be.

There are two mysteries to be solved but Jake doesn’t know that yet. What he does know is that something strange is going on at the reservoir. Lots of strange things are going on that are connected with water but none of these things make any sense.

Jake slowly becomes aware that there’s another mystery. Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) has hired him but there’s something she’s not telling him and it’s something very important. That’s all he knows. He doesn’t know why she is hiding something. He doesn’t know if he can trust her. Jake doesn’t like mysteries that he can’t solve. Somehow he is going to find the answers.

He does suspect that some of the answers lie in the past, and that Evelyn’s father Noah Cross (John Huston) is involved somehow. Noah Cross is very rich and very powerful and very ruthless.

Jake gradually uncovers some answers but they always lead to more questions and they’re usually the wrong answers anyway. Jake isn’t stupid. He is not a seedy down-at-heel PI eking out a living. He’s a very successful private eye. He knows his business. He just has no way of knowing what he’s stumbled into. He thinks he’s doing everything right but it all turns out wrong.

It’s like Chinatown all over again. Jake had been a cop in Chinatown where he’d learnt that it doesn’t matter how smart you are and how hard you try you’re not going to find the answers, your investigation will always lead nowhere and you might as well not bother trying. And when you to try to save someone, as Jake once tried, you end up dooming them instead. That’s why Jake isn’t a cop any more. Jake couldn’t take that sort of thing any longer.

Screenwriter Robert Towne saw Chinatown as a metaphor for the futility of good intentions.

He wrote the part of Jake Gittes specifically for Jack Nicholson and Nicholson gives his career-best performance. It’s a very Jack Nicholson performance but at the same time it’s a controlled disciplined performance. Faye Dunaway also gives a career-best performance as a woman so badly damaged that she’s close to falling apart and Dunaway makes her wholly believable and real. John Huston oozes evil and corruption from every pore.

It’s a movie in which everything comes together perfectly. Towne’s script unfolds beautifully. Polanski was the right choice as director and doesn’t put a foot wrong. The production design is superb. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is magnificent. It’s difficult to find a single flaw in this movie. It’s the most perfect Hollywood movie of the 70s. Very highly recommended.

The Blu-ray is packed with wonderful extras. There’s an audio commentary featuring Robert Towne and half a dozen documentaries covering every facet of the production.

Larceny in Her Heart (1946)

Larceny in Her Heart, released in 1946, is the second of the five 1940s Mike Shayne movies made by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). 20th Century-Fox had made seven movies starring Lloyd Nolan in the early 40s based on the popular Mike Shayne novels of Davis Dresser (written under the pseudonym Brett Halliday).

PRC revived the series in 1946 with Hugh Beaumont as Shayne. The Mike Shayne of the novels is pretty hardboiled but both the Lloyd Nolan and Hugh Beaumont Shayne movies are very much lighter in tone with Beaumont’s Shayne becoming a cheerful easygoing guy who seems to think that being a private detective is a great lark.

Mike and his girlfriend Phyllis (Cheryl Walker) are just about to take off on a vacation when a middle-aged man named Burton Stallings offers Mike a case, with a big fat retainer as an inducement. It’s about his missing step-daughter Helen.

Mike turns the case down but then changes his mind when a very distressed very dishevelled young woman arrives at his office and promptly passes out. Mike has reason to believe that this girl will make the Helen Stallings case ridiculously easy to crack, which will earn Mike a fat fee for virtually no work.

The dead body on the couch puts an end to Mike’s daydreams about easy cases. There’s only one thing worse than having a corpse on your hands and that’s having the corpse disappear again without explanation. And there’s one thing that’s even worse than that - having the corpse turn up again.

Mike also has Detective Sergeant Pete Rafferty to deal with. Rafferty has a grudge against Mike. Explaining a dead body to Rafferty might be tricky.

Shayne does have a lead. It’s always good to have a lead but when the lead comes in the form of a shapely blonde that’s even better. And this shapely blonde seems to be very friendly towards private detectives. She’s been a nurse at the Stallings residence. Mike already knows that screwy things have been happening there but he needs to know the details. Lucille (the shapely blonde nurse) might just to able to fill him in.

There’s also a gangster and a trumpet player, both of whom seem to have been interested in Helen Stallings. Mike goes undercover as a patient in a private sanitarium for rich drunks. That dead body continues to be a problem.

The one major flaw of American B-movies of the 30s and 40s is an over-abundance of comic relief. That’s a bit of a problem here but the comedy is amusing enough.

Hugh Beaumont is brimming with charm and gives a lively performance. He’s definitely the best thing about this film. The other players are all quite adequate.

This is a PRC movie so production values are at best basic but then (bearing in mind the words of wisdom of Jean-Luc Godard) all you really need for a private eye movie is a girl and a gun. This one has a reasonably OK story (although one or two incidents do get just a tad confusing) and some amusing banter as well as girls and guns.

Director Sam Newfield churned out countless B-pictures (he may have been the most prolific American director of all time). He does a pretty uninspiring job here although of course you do have to remember that PRC shooting schedules were incredibly tight. It would have been nice to have a bit more action and a bit less talking.

Some of the other movies in the series were adaptations of Brett Halliday novels but in this case Howard L. Shrock’s screenplay is an original story.

The big problem with this movie is that some key elements are left very obscure and some incidents don’t make a whole lot of sense. We’re told too many things rather than getting to see them.

All five PRC Mike Shayne movies have been released on DVD, on a single disc, by Classicflix. Larceny in Her Heart gets a transfer that is far from pristine but it’s OK. It’s better than Alpha Video quality. The sound is a little crackly at times but there’s no problem following the dialogue.

This is a movie for those who like their crime B-movies light and breezy. If you fall into that category there’s probably enough here to keep you happy but it’s a slight disappointment after the first of the PRC films, the excellent Murder Is My Business. If you’re going to buy the Classicflix set (and if you’re a B-movie fan you should) then Larceny in Her Heart is worth a look if you set your expectations at a modest level.

Murder Is My Business (1946)

Murder Is My Business, released early in 1946, is the first of the Mike Shayne movies made by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) in the 1940s. Private detective Mike Shayne was created by Davis Dresser, writing under the pseudonym Brett Halliday. The novels were successful enough to attract the attention of Hollywood and 20th Century-Fox made seven Mike Shayne movies between 1940 and 1942, all starring Lloyd Nolan. The movie series was revived by PRC in 1946 with five films featuring Hugh Beaumont as Shayne. There would be later radio and TV incarnations as well. Mike Shayne just kept bouncing back.

It has to be said that the movie incarnations of Mike Shayne bear little resemblance to Halliday’s hardboiled creation.

Murder Is My Business wastes no time telling us what we need to know about Mike Shayne. He’s cocky, cheerful and good-natured. The cops hate him, which amuses him greatly.

Mike has reason to be less amused when his latest case goes bad. Really bad. He was hired by a wealthy woman, Mrs Ramsey (Helen Heigh), who’s been receiving threatening letters. Mr Ramsey (Pierre Watkin) then offers Mike a thousand dollars to help him pull an insurance swindle, which of course Mike has no intention of doing. Then two people wind up dead and an old pal of Mike’s, an ex-con named Joe Darnell who’s been trying to go straight, seems to be responsible. And Mike is implicated. Mike is certain it was a setup. To clear Joe’s name (and his own) he’ll have to find the murderer and he won’t get any help from the cops.

Mike has reason to suspect just about every member of the Ramsey household. He already knows Mr Ramsey is a crook. Mr Ramsey’s two children from a previous marriage, Ernest (David Reed) and Dorothy (Julia McMillan) are obnoxious spoilt brats. There’s also Carl Meldrum (George Meeker). He was having an affair with Mrs Ramsey and more recently he’s been romantically involved with Dorothy. All of these people want to get their hands on the Ramsey bankroll.

There’s also night-club owner Buell Renslow. Since he’s played by Lyle Talbot we know he’s up to no good.

Fred Myton’s screenplay is solid enough, providing us with numerous suspects all of whom are involved in shady dealings but shady dealings don’t necessarily add up to murder.

Sam Newfield was an incredibly prolific but reasonably competent B-picture director and he keeps the pacing satisfyingly brisk.

I’m pretty impressed by Hugh Beaumont. He’s more hardboiled than Lloyd Nolan but he has charm and he has the swagger that a private eye needs. And he knows how to trade wisecracks. Lyle Talbot is of course terrific. Cheryl Walker is fine as Mike’s faithful secretary Phyllis Hamilton, who dreams of being more than just Mike’s secretary. She’d like to play at being a private eye too. The supporting players are competent. Carol Andrews gives off the right femme fatale vibes as night-club hostess Mona. Julia McMillan had a very very brief career but I liked her as Dorothy, a girl who’s dangerous because she’s not as tough or as smart as she thinks she is.

Being a PRC production means that this was a very low budget feature but you don’t need much money to make a decent private eye flick. As Jean-Luc Godard once said, all you need is a girl and a gun.

The five PRC Shayne movies have been released on DVD (on a single disc) by Classicflix. Murder Is My Business is obviously unrestored but the transfer is decent enough.

Murder Is My Business is slightly more hardboiled than the 20th Century-Fox Shayne movies. You could describe it as mediumboiled. Fortunately there are no irritating comic relief characters. It offers a decent mystery plot and a likeable lead. There's plenty of action and lots of fistfights (and a catfight as well). It all adds up to very solid B-movie entertainment. I actually enjoyed this one more than the 20th Century-Fox movies. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the 1945 Brett Halliday novel Murder Is My Business which appears to share nothing with this movie other than the title!

I’ve also reviewed the four 20th Century-Fox Mike Shayne movies - Michael Shayne: Private Detective (1940), The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1942), Sleepers West (1941) and Blue, White and Perfect (1942).

Blue, White and Perfect (1942)

Blue, White and Perfect, released in 1942, was the fourth of the seven 20th Century-Fox B-movies featuring private eye Michael Shayne and starring Lloyd Nolan. After 20th Century-Fox lost interest in the series five more films (with Hugh Beaumont in the title rôle) were made by Poverty Row studio PRC in 1946.

The character had been created by Davis Dresser, writing under the pseudonym Brett Halliday. He wrote dozens of Mike Shayne novels between 1939 and 1958 and more were later written by various ghostwriters.

In the 50s there was also a Michael Shayne TV series and a radio series.

Mike Shayne (Nolan) has just had some bad news. His girlfriend Merle (Mary Beth Hughes) is getting married, but not to him. She’s fallen for a charming Frenchman. Mike will have to do something about this. Unfortunately Merle insists that he gives up the private detective business. He agrees and gets a job as a riveter with the Thomas Aircraft Company, or at least that’s what Merle thinks, but in fact the company has hired him as an investigator.

He’ll soon have plenty to investigate. The aircraft plant is absolutely riddled with German spies! We know straight away they’re German spies because they all have heavy German accents and they behave in a really sinister manner, just like German spies in the movies. The spies have stolen some industrial diamonds, essential for the war effort.

The spies intend to get the diamonds out of the country on the liner Princess Nola so Mike will have to take an ocean voyage to keep tabs on them. He’ll need money for that, so he cons it out of poor Merle. On the steamer he runs into an old friend, the glamorous Helen Shaw (Helene Reynolds). He also makes a new friend, Juan Arturo O’Hara (played be George Reeves, yes Superman himself). Whether Helen and Juan are mixed up in the spy business or just innocent bystanders remans to be seen. Mike is sure he’s on the right track with the spies because people keep trying to shoot him (Mike always sees that as a positive sign).

Shayne doesn’t really solve the case. He just manages to stay alive long enough to stumble over the solution. He can’t even be given credit for the staying alive part - it’s mostly just dumb luck. Which makes him strangely likeable. You can’t help wondering what his next mistake will be.

The Fox Mike Shayne movies were very lightweight and had a tendency at times to overdo the comedic elements. That’s less of a problem with this film. The focus is more heavily on the plot and it’s at least a little bit more hardboiled (but only a little) than other entries in the series. Lloyd Nolan is also much better when, as in this film, he tones the comedy down a bit. There’s still plenty of humour and plenty of wisecracks but he comes across as a moderately believable (if not very competent) private detective.

It needs to be admitted up front that Michael Shayne as played by Lloyd Nolan bears no resemblance at all to the Michael Shayne of the novels. None whatsoever.

Mary Beth Hughes is fine as the long-suffering Merle (she appeared in several movies in this series but as different characters). Helene Reynolds is very good as the glamorous woman who may or may not turn out to be a femme fatale.

Fox released four of the Michael Shayne movies (with extremely nice transfers) in a DVD set a few years back. They even included some worthwhile extras. If you can find the set and you’re a B-movie fan and you don’t mind B-movies with strong comedic elements then it’s good value.

I’ve seen all four movies in this set and this might be the one I enjoyed most. Lightweight but recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Michael Shayne: Private Detective (1940), The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1942) and Sleepers West (1941). You might also be interested in my review of one of the novels, Murder Is My Business.