Have some fun and enjoy this public domain copy on RetroTV.com of the 50′s schlock noir Jail Bait from the legendary Ed Wood.

Rated 2.2/10.0 on IMDB (so bad it’s good):

“She’s A Good Girl… To Leave Alone!”

Vic Brady draws young Don Gregor into a life of crime. He then blackmails Gregor’s plastic surgeon father…

‘Jail Bait’, directed by the legendary Ed Wood, is an enjoyably bad attempt at Film Noir on a shoestring budget. The cast includes Lyle Talbot, Dolores Fuller and Timothy Farrell from Wood’s classic ‘Glen Or Glenda’, as well as a very early appearance by Steve Reeves. Talbot once again plays a kindly cop, but this time Farrell is on the other side of the law, the nasty Vic Brady. Brady has corrupted Fuller’s brother Don (Clancy Malone) the middle class son of a world renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor (Herbert Rawlinson). We first see Don being bailed out by his sister Marilyn (Dolores Fuller) after being caught carrying an unlicensed firearm. Despite his sister’s concern and a stern lecture from Ins. Johns (Talbot), he continues to associate with small time crook Vic Brady. A robbery gone wrong results in the death of a Night Watchman. Don’s conscience gets the better of him and he intends to give himself up, but Brady has other ideas… ideas which involve Dr. Gregor’s skills as a plastic surgeon. The combination of Wood’s trademark lousy dialogue and the stilted performances of the actors (especially Malone and Fuller) with Farrell’s hammy Vic Brady and the nutty denouement make ‘Jail Bait’ a lot of fun to watch.

If you install UnPlug for Firefox you can download the movie. And don’t forget the pop-corn…

I just came across this book of film noir posters from the classic period of film noir: Crime Scenes: Movie Poster Art of the Film Noir : The Classic Period : 1941-1959 by Lawrence Bassoff (Paperback).

Available from Amazon from US$20.

On December 18, Warner will release a definitive version of director Ridley Scott’s cult classic Blade Runner: The Final Cut, a fusion of film noir and science fiction The DVD set will also feature four other versions of the movie. The film will be available in both HD formats and in three different DVD editions, with the final cut also receiving select theatrical releases in New York, Los Angeles and the Venice Film Festival.  More from Variety.

Update 31 July 2007: Hollywood.com Interview with Ridley Scott on his memories of making Blade Runner.

Turner Classic Movies will feature these Robert Mitchum noirs on Monday 6 August:

Out of the Past
The Big Steal
The Racket
Thunder Road

I have been searching for ages for a thumbnail of a poster for 20,000 Years In Sing Sing (1932) for that film’s entry in the FilmsNoir.Net Films Noir Catalog, and I know from my search stats that many visitors have been looking too.

I have finally located an original poster, which looks in excellent condition, for sale for US$600 from FilmPosters.com.

Item #: 11425 Mini Window Card. 8in x 12in, FINE, U.S.

Be quick if you have the cash, as I don’t. I will have to settle for this image:

First time independent director, Rian Johnson, shot the alleged neo-noir Brick after raising $500,000 from friends and relatives. The film received the Special Jury Prize at Sundance.

After all the hype, I was disappointed. Though technically competent and with clever allusions to the film noir genre, I found the story distasteful and with little real meaning or social value. The plot is confusing and the mumbled dialog of tribal argot generally unintelligible. An obvious influence is Tarantino, and this is also a negative.

The film may have some meaning for local audiences, but outside CA you can give it a miss. Or maybe, I am just too old…

On July 31, Warner Home Video, will release Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4, which contains a bumper 10 remastered movies on five double DVDs from the classic film noir period of the 40s and 50s:

Act of Violence / Mystery Street
Crime Wave / Decoy
Illegal / The Big Steal
They Live By Night / Side Street
Where Danger Lives / Tension

Each DVD in the set can be purchased separately.

The DVD release has reviewed by Glenn Erickson of DVDTalk.Com, with a focus on They Live By Night and Side Street.

Update 7 Aug 2007: Decoy has been has been reviewed on Noir Of the Week.
Update 8 Aug 2007: All movies on the DVD are reviewed in filmjournal.net by clydefro.
Update 9 Aug 2007: All movies on the DVD are reviewed by Adnan Tezer at dvd.monstersandcritics.com.
Update 13 Aug 2007: All movies on the DVD are reviewed by dvdverdict.com.
Update 14 Aug 2007: All movies on the DVD are reviewed by The Shelf DVD Reviews.
Update 21 Aug 2007: All movies on the DVD are reviewed by Film Forno.
Update 9 Sep 2007: An interesting review of the DVD and film noir generally by Cullen Gallagher of The Brooklyn Rail.

These movies are a feast for noir fans with many of the top-level directors and stars of the period featured:

Act of Violence (1948)
Cast: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, Phyllis Thaxter
Director: Fred Zinnemann
War veteran Frank Enley seems to be a happily married small-town citizen until he realises Joe Parkson is in town. It seems Parkson is out for revenge because of something that happened in a German POW camp, and when a frightened Enley suddenly leaves for a convention in L.A., Parkson is close behind.

Mystery Street (1950)
Cast: Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Marshall Thompson
Director: John Sturges
Vivian, a B-girl working at “The Grass Skirt,” is being brushed off by her rich, married boyfriend. To confront him, she hijacks drunken customer Henry Shanway and his car from Boston to Cape Cod, where she strands Henry…and is never seen again. Months later, a skeleton is found (sans clothes or clues) on a lonely Cape Cod beach. Using the macabre expertise of Harvard forensic specialist Dr. McAdoo, Lt. Pete Morales must work back from bones to the victim’s identity, history, and killer. Will he succeed in time to save an innocent suspect?

Crime Wave (1954)
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk, Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson
Director: André De Toth
Three San Quentin escapees kill a cop in a gas-station holdup. Wounded, Morgan flees through black-shadowed streets to the handiest refuge: with former cellmate Steve Lacey, who’s paroled, with a new life and lovely wife, and can’t afford to be caught associating with old cronies. But homicide detective Sims wants to use Steve to help him catch Penny and Hastings, who in turn extort his help in a bank job. Is there no way out for Steve?

Decoy (1946)
Cast: Jean Gillie, Edward Norris, Robert Armstrong, Herbert Rudley, Sheldon Leonard
Director: Jack Bernhard
Gangster Frank Olins (Robert Armstrong) is to die in the gas chamber much to the dismay of his girlfriend Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) as he is carrying the secret of the location of $400,000 with him. Margot seduces gangster Jim Vincent (Edward Norris) to get him to engineer the removal of Olins’ body from the prison immediately after he dies in the gas chamber. She takes prison doctor Craig (Herbert Rudley) away from his nurse/girl friend (Marjorie Woodworth) and gets him to administer an antidote for cyanide gas poisoning. During the removal of Olins’ body, the hearse driver is killed by Tommy (Phil Van Zandt). The revived Olins gives Margot half of a map showing the money location and Vincent, in a fit of jealousy, kills Olins and takes the other half. Because the doctor’s plates on his car will get them through the police roadblocks, Vincent and Margot take him with them on the money hunt.

Illegal (1955)
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Nina Foch, Hugh Marlowe, Robert Ellenstein, DeForest Kelley
Director: Lewis Allen
Ambitious D.A. Victor Scott zealously prosecutes Ed Clary for a woman’s murder. But as Clary walks “the last mile” to the electric chair, Scott receives evidence that exonerates the condemned man. Realizing that he’s made a terrible mistake he tries to stop the execution but is too late. Humbled by his grievous misjudgement, Scott resigns as a prosecutor. Entering private practice, he employs the same cunning that made his reputation and draws the attention of mob kingpin, Frank Garland. The mobster succeeds in bribing Scott into representing one of his stooges on a murder rap and Scott, in a grand display of courtroom theatrics, wins the case. But soon Scott finds himself embroiled in dirty mob politics. The situation becomes intolerable when his former protégé in the D.A.’s office is charged with a murder that seems to implicate her as an informant to the Garland mob. Can Victor defend the woman he secretly loves and also keep his life?

The Big Steal (1949)
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, William Bendix, Patrick Knowles, Ramon Novarro
Director: Don Siegel
Jane and Duke (alias Capt. Blake) accidentally meet in Vera Cruz while chasing flim-flam man Fiske. Soon the local Inspector General (El Gato) is involved. Fiske races across Mexico, pursued by Jane and Duke, trailed by the real Capt. Blake. The crafty Inspector General is waiting for them in Tihuacan but they all give him the slip, just in time for the climactic finale. Very tight script and pacing.

They Live by Night (1948
Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig
Director: Nicholas Ray
In the ’30s, three prisoners flee from a state prison farm in Mississippi. Among them is 23-yo Bowie, who spent the last seven years in prison and now hopes to be able to prove his innocence or retire to a home in the mountains and live in peace together with his new love, Kitty. But his criminal companions persuade him to participate in several heists, and soon the police believe him to be their leader and go after “Bowie the Kid” harder than ever.

Side Street (1950)
Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Paul Kelly, Jean Hagen
Director: Anthony Mann
Joe Norson, a poor letter carrier with a sweet, pregnant wife, yields to momentary temptation and steals $30,000 belonging to a pair of ruthless blackmailers who won’t stop at murder. After a few days of soul-searching, Joe offers to return the money, only to find that the “friend” he left it with has absconded. Now every move Joe makes plunges him deeper into trouble, as he’s pursued and pursuing through the shadowy, sinister side of New York.

Where Danger Lives (1950)
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, Claude Rains, Maureen O’Sullivan, Charles Kemper
Director: John Farrow
One night at the hospital, young doctor Jeff Cameron meets Margo, who’s brought in after a suicide attempt. He quickly falls for her and they become romantically involved, but it turns out that Margo is married. At a confrontation, Margo’s husband accidentally gets killed and Jeff and Margo flee. Heading for Mexico, they try to outrun the law.

Tension (1950)
Cast: Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Gough
Director: John Berry
A mousy drugstore manager turns killer after his conniving wife leaves him for another man. He devises a complex plan, which involves assuming a new identity, to make it look like someone else murdered her new boyfriend. Things take an unexpected turn when someone else commits the murder first and he becomes the prime suspect.

The screenplay for The Killers by Anthony Veiller, Richard Brooks, and John Huston (uncredited), is not so much an adaptation of Hemingway’s short story (1927), but an imaginative response and more strongly a rebuttal to the last few lines at the end of Hemingway’s text spoken by Nick Adams, the guy who runs from the diner to warn Ole Anderson (‘the Swede’) of the Killers’ arrival:

“I’m going to get out of this town”, Nick said… “I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”

After establishing the absolute resolve of the killers in the opening sequence, which is essentially faithful to Hemingway’s text, the film ventures on to explore the burning questions in the mind of the audience. What did the Swede do to warrant this retribution? Why doesn’t he run? In pursuing the story, the film’s ethos is that it takes courage not cowardice to confront and accept an inevitable – even violent – death.

In Hemingway’s text the Swede’s explanation to Nick is “I got it wrong”, but this is changed in the script to “I did something wrong – once”. These stronger words are the fulcrum of the picture. Ole’s repentance is established from the outset and his tragic redemption seared into the viewer’s sympathies even before his story unfolds. How the script and the director, Robert Siodmak, construct the narrative using flashbacks and the continuum of the insurance investigation is a lesson on filmic technique.

The ‘rap sheet’ read to insurance investigator, Jim Reardon, by his secretary, tells us that despite Ole losing his parents at a young age, he managed to grow up straight in a tough neighbourhood until after his career as a boxer is ended by an injury in his last fight, when he falls in with the wrong crowd, and ends up in the numbers racket. Ole’s life from that fight to his death is a story of betrayal. In the dressing-room after the fight, he is dumped by his manager and trainer without empathy or ceremony. Later, his childhood friend, a cop, let’s him take the rap for the femme fatale, who then goes on to betray him again when she enacts the final double-cross.

A decent man destroyed by fate: the stuff tragedy is made of.