THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER. RKO Radio, 1932. Edna May Oliver, James Gleason, Robert Armstrong, Mae Clarke, Donald Cook, Edgar Kennedy. Based on the mystery novel by Stuart Palmer. Director: George Archainbaud. Shown at Cinevent 19, Columbus OH, May 1987.

   The Penguin Pool Murder is based on the popular Stuart Palmer Hildegarde Withers series and was the first of three films to star the redoubtable Edna Mae Oliver as the spinster amateur detective.

   I thought it a very appealing film indeed, but when I mentioned my enjoyment of the film to a friend he observed that he had erased it from a tape, expunging this “poorly paced” Withers/ Piper collaboration, but preserving for posterity (and me, perhaps, at a later date) a “superior” later entry in the series.

   I liked the film for the fizzy chemistry between Edna Mae Oliver and Inspector Piper, played with his usual engaging asperity by James Gleason, and what seemed to my bemused eyes to be a nicely paced comedy-mystery with some Oscar-worthy histrionics by a talented penguin.

   But I must confess that when it comes to Edna Mae Oliver, I am a patsy in the throes of an unrequited passion. My favorite Oliver performance is in John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk, where she plays a feisty widow putting Indians to rout with a broom and a stentorian voice until an arrow terminates her terroristic cavorting.

   (The only contemporary actress I can compare her to in the effect she has on me is pint-sized Linda Hunt, who conveys more intelligence and sympathy with a look than most actresses do with a pageful of dialogue. I enjoyed her unanchored — by the script — performance in Silverado, where amid the clutter of this entertaining shoot-’em-up [and down], she displays a purity of character and demeanor that raises most of her scenes to a level to which little else in the film aspires.)

   As for Penguin Pool Murder, however, I will delay my definitive judgment on it until I have seen the other Oliver/Gleason collaborations in the series.

SO LONG AT THE FAIR. Gainsborough (UK), 1950; Eagle-Lion/United Artists (US). Jean Simmons, Dirk Bogarde, David Tomlinson, Austin Trevor, Honor Blackman, Andre Morell, Felix Alymer, Cathleen Nesbitt Screenwriters: Hugh Mills & Anthony Thorne, based on the latter’s novel (Heinemann, 1947). Directors: Terence Fisher & Anthony Darnborough.

   Ah, this one is a charmer, and all the more fascinating because it is based on what well may be a true story. Simmons is Vicky Barton a young Englishwoman traveling with her brother Johnny (David Tomlinson) to the famous Paris Exposition of 1896. Her head is filled with romance and wonder and dreams of adventure — that are about to turn into nightmare.

   The brother and sister arrive in Paris and check into their nice upper middle class hotel, they have a night on the town in which they meet British artist George Hathaway (Dirk Borgarde) who is living and working in Paris, and a balloonist who is making an ascent for the Exposition before returning home for an early night so they can take in the Exposition the next day.

   The day dawns bright and beautiful and Simmons goes to awaken her brother who apparently has slept in.

   Only to find his room is no longer there.

   Confused and more than a little panicked she calls on a maid. Who informs her there has never been a room there and no such room number as the one she insists her brother was staying in. She goes downstairs to the manager — and is told that she arrived alone, checked in alone, and they have never seen nor heard of her brother. Her name alone is on the reservation and her name alone is in the registration book.

   Of course we’ve seen the brother so we know something is up, but from here on the film becomes a mix of thriller, detective story, and even a touch or two of the Grand Guignol as Simmons makes increasingly desperate attempts to convince the authorities in the form of a French Police Commissaire (Austin Trevor) and those around her she is sane and really has a brother before they lock her away, as no one seems to believe her, not even the British consul.

   She remembers the balloonist and rushes to see him eluding those who want to lock her up, but arrives too late, he has made his ascent. And as she watches in horror his balloon bursts into flames and he falls to his death.

   Finally she remembers the young artist who was so kind. And to her relief finds him. Of course he recalls her brother. But it proves no help. The police simply assume he is trying to seduce her by claiming to believe her preposterous story. After all, there is no evidence save the word of two foreigners, and why would the hotel lie, and risk a scandal during the most important event for tourism in French history?

   It all seems lost until Bogarde’s artist eye takes in one telling detail.

   The hotel has one more balcony on the brother’s floor than it has rooms …

   I won’t give away the secret, save to say it is both shocking and offers a touch of almost gothic horror to the proceedings — something both horrible and yet not only believable, but in this case possibly true.

   A film like this lives on the qualities of cast, script, direction, and almost as importantly the costumes and sets, and this one is a beauty to look at. Terence Fisher, who would helm many of the best of the famed Hammer horror films, directs with a sure hand, and Simmons’ fine balance between hysteria and spunk keeps the viewer pulling for her even we start to doubt what we have seen. The Paris of the Belle Epocque is evoked with real skill, and you may not even notice that all the French have British accents. At least you may not mind.

   This is a small gem of a film, and should be appreciated in that spirit. It’s what might be called a “curious tale,” and taken in that spirit, it is both mystifying and intriguing with a payoff as good as any murder, spy, or horror film. Plus there is the bonus that this one may have actually happened, if not exactly like this.

   It’s a perfect little film that achieves everyone of its modest goals and does so with such charm and ease it puts many bigger and more ambitious films to shame. Approach it in the right mood, and the right frame of mind, knowing it is as much a cautionary fable as a suspense film and you’ll find it succeeds at what it sets out to do.

   There is some question as to whether this tale ever really happened, and if it did during which French Exposition, but it’s a great story true or not, and handled here with the maximum of style and skill. Let the historians argue about the facts and enjoy the fiction, and next time you travel, carry a camera — and maybe a few witnesses. You never know when your hotel room is going to disappear.

      Note:

   Austin Trevor, who plays the Police Commissaire, was well suited to play detectives. He had previously played Hercule Poirot and Philip MacDonald’s Anthony Gethryn. It was a photo of Trevor as Poirot that accompanied the obituary for the character that ran in the New York Times upon the publication of Curtain.

JULIAN SYMONS – The Broken Penny. Victor Gollancz, UK. hardcover, 1953. Harper & Bros., US, hc, 1953*. US paperback reprints include: Dolphin C227, 1960; Beagle, 1971; Perennial Library P480, 1980; Carroll & Graf, 1988*.     (* = shown)

   Many writers of espionage are content to rely on newspaper stories thinly disguised as fiction, with terrorism and hijacking their stock in trade. Though The Broken Penny (1953), recently reprinted by Carroll and Graf, is flawed, it remains a much more imaginative cold-war thriller.

   Telling of the attempt to oust the communist government of a country never named, but apparently based on Poland, Symons provides a devastating picture of people under the totalitarian yoke, but he saves some room to show Britain and the British army in what is not their finest hour.

   There is suspense, but mostly The Broken Penny is about the attempt of its protagonist to maintain his Idealism in a world that had gone mad in the early 1950s — and isn’t much saner as I write these words.

   [EDITORIAL COMMENT.] The fellow in the cover of the Carroll & Graf paperback edition looks a lot like Henry Fonda to me. The girl looks familiar as well, but I can’t put a name to the face. This is rather surprising, as there never was a film version of The Broken Penny.

   In fact, and what’s even more surprising, is that according to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, of all the mystery novels that Julian Symons wrote, only one of them has ever been made into a movie, that one being The Narrowing Circle (1954; film, 1955).

   The detective in that book was Inspector Crambo, who also appeared in The Gigantic Shadow (1958, published in the US as The Pipe Dream). According to IMDB, Trevor Reid played Inspector ‘Dumb’ Crambo in The Narrowing Circle, which also featured Paul Carpenter, Hazel Court and Russell Napier. (And if Hazel Court is in it, then it’s a must find.)

   Included in the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, a series episode of Kraft Suspense Theater entitled “Twixt the Cup and the Lip” was based on a short story in the collection How to Trap a Crook and 12 Other Mysteries.

   But it looks as though I’ll have to tell Al Hubin about this: According to IMDB, the following Symons novels were also turned to movies:

      Criss Cross Code (*) as Counterspy.

      The Man Who Killed Himself as Arthur! Arthur!

      The Blackheath Poisonings, as a 3-part miniseries.

      [??] as Die Spur führt ins Verderben. (**)

  (*) This is not a novel, but a perhaps uncollected novelette first published in Lilliput, Aug-Sept 1951. (**) According to Babel Fish, a direct translation is “The trace leads into spoiling.”

[UPDATE] 06-17-09.   Al Hubin has agreed that items 2 and 3 should be in CFIV, and the first also, but only if “Criss Cross Code” appeared in a Symons story collection, perhaps in retitled form.

   Also, in the comments, Steve W. has pointed out that The Thirty-First of February “was made into what I remember to be a quite good episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour.”

   True. It was, and I missed it when I was researching Symons on IMDB last night. Date: 4 January 1963, and as Steve advised me in a followup email, “the whole season is available at Hulu. Here’s the link to the Symons adaptation: HULU: 31st of February.”

   So far, I’ve managed to stay away from Hulu. I spend too much time at the computer as it is, and to start watching TV here at my desk might mean never getting anything done. Nonetheless, there might be a possibility of exceptions being made. Maybe now and then?

BERMUDA MYSTERY. 20th Century-Fox, 1944. Preston Foster, Ann Rutherford, Charles Butterworth, Helene Reynolds, Jean Howard, Richard Lane, Theodore von Eltz, Jason Robards (Sr). Based on a story by John Larkin. Director: Benjamin Stoloff.

   While there is more comedy and romance in this detective story, there is still enough mystery involved to make this strictly B-movie interesting and enjoyable, not to mention that the comedy and romance have a lot to do with it, too!

   It’s also a private eye novel, straight from the pages of a 1940s Dime Detective magazine, which is to say slightly wacky and screwballish in nature, and of course there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Preston Foster is the PI, a guy named Steve Carramond, and his client is a girl (naturally), the vivacious dark-haired Constance Martin (Ann Rutherford), and the niece of one of the members of a tontine who has recently died under suspicious circumstances.

   A tontine is one of those agreements in which the last surviving members of a group of individuals who’ve put money into a large pot, so to speak, split the proceeds. Not that the word tontine is ever mentioned in the movie, but it’s explained well enough for everyone in the audience to know exactly what’s going on.

   Well, more or less, that is, as any resemblance to actual police procedure goes by the boards fairly quickly. Did I mention that the story takes place in New York City? I should. Only the opening scenes take place in Bermuda, where Connie’s uncle lived. The other members all live in Manhattan, or they did, until they start to die off shortly before the end of the group’s agreement.

   Here’s where the romance comes in. Steve is hired a little under protest, as he’s supposed to be getting married the next day, but when Connie winks at us (the audience) we know precisely how that’s going to come out. Which it does.

   How the movie comes out, and who the killer is, is another matter altogether.

   In a tontine story, there are so many possible choices as to who might be the killer, a story writer really doesn’t have to be all that clever — just keep the action going, which it does, fairly nearly foot-on-the-floor and non-stop all the way.

   Ann Rutherford, who was only 24 when she made this movie, is a charmer all the way, having already finished a long career through her teens as Polly Benedict in the Andy Hardy movies. Preston Foster, besides doing the heavy lifting, also does “put upon” very well in the comedy and romance end of things.

   (For more on director Benjamin Stoloff, as well as some early discussion of Bermuda Mystery, see the comments following Walter Albert’s review of Super-Sleuth, which he also directed.)

   But don’t get me wrong. In spite of the usual nonsense that accumulates in B-movie mysteries like this, there actually is some cleverness involved. You may scope it out as easily as I, or maybe even easier, as I wasn’t really trying. Mostly I was just enjoying myself.

PostScript. In those earlier comments following Super-Sleuth, here’s what David Vineyard had to say about this movie in particular:

    “Though it isn’t listed as such at IMDB, Bermuda Mystery is a remake of the Crime Club Mystery film The Last Warning based on Jonathan Latimer’s The Dead Don’t Care. Foster played PI Bill Crane in the Last Warning. The mystery is something of a Thin Man style romantic mystery, though in some ways so is Latimer’s novel.

    “Bermuda Mystery has a screenplay by John Larkin (Quiet Please, Murder!) who wrote several good screenplays and directed a bit too.”

THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER. Seven Arts, 1961. Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Pierre Mondy, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin, Michel Piccoli, Catherine Allégret (debut), Charles Denner. Based on the novel Compartiment Tueurs (aka The 10:30 From Marseille) by Sébastien Japrisot. Director: Costa-Gravas.

   Before he made his mark as a political director with leftist leanings, Costa-Gravas made his debut with this slick little police thriller about the hunt for a mad killer.

   The police are represented by Inspector Grazziano (Grazzi) played by Yves Montand and his younger partner Grabert played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, whose involvement begins with the discovery of a body on the Phoce’en, the 10:30 morning train from Marseille, and an attractive young woman who has been murdered.

   We are almost instantly in Maigret country, but to Costa-Gravas’s credit, he establishes his own visual style and technique rather than rely on memories of films of Simenon’s novels. There is nothing leisurely or casual about Montand and Grabert. They are real policemen who chew on antacids, smoke too many cigarettes, and take endless notes, and almost from the top they are up to their necks in it, because before they have finished sorting the first corpse there’s a second waiting for them. The weariness in Montand’s lined doggedly handsome features becomes a character in itself.

   Police and authorities are seldom sympathetic characters in Costra-Gravas’s films, so it comes as a shock how much this film identifies with its put-upon policeman heroes.

   They are decent men with lives outside the office, and would rather do just about anything than have their superiors down their necks as they face an increasing number of corpses and a possibly mad killer.

   Costa-Gravas relies less on flashy camerawork and more on storytelling in this one, with atmosphere to spare, thanks to cinematographer Jean Tournier’s brilliant camera work, the film’s quick pace and the well-done action scenes.

   Signoret and the rest of the cast are fine, as might be expected, and thanks to staying close to Japrisot’s tight cinematic script, the film is both suspenseful and a good mystery well-solved.

   That said, you would do well to find a copy of the film with subtitles and avoid the awful dubbed version I first saw.

   Costa-Gravas became a world wide sensation with his next film, Z, but his increasingly leftist films became more propaganda than entertainment, though his one American film Missing, with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, was highly thought of. Since then politics outstripped the film-making in too many of his later works. Montand also appeared in Z, State of Siege, and The Confession all helmed by Costa-Gravas, forming one of the French cinema’s most productive teamings.

   Sébastien Japrisot is one of the more familiar French writers on this side of the Atlantic, thanks to the films of his works, including his original screenplays for Rider on the Rain and Goodbye Friend, and adaptations of many others like Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun and One Deadly Summer. Most recently the 2004 film of his novel A Very Long Engagement was an international hit.

           27 Wednesday 2009

6:00 AM Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, The (1930)
       A fishing trip leads Laurel and Hardy to a mansion where a murder has been committed. Cast: Frank Austin, Stanley Blystone, Robert ‘Bobby’ Burns. Dir: James Parrott. BW-30 mins,

6:30 AM Bishop Murder Case, The (1930)
       Society sleuth Philo Vance investigates a series of murders inspired by Mother Goose rhymes. Cast: Basil Rathbone, Leila Hyams, Roland Young. Dir: Nick Grinde. BW-87 mins, TV-G, CC

8:00 AM Kennel Murder Case, The (1933)
       Society sleuth Philo Vance investigates a murder tied to a Long Island dog show. Cast: William Powell, Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-73 mins, TV-G, CC

9:15 AM Dragon Murder Case, The (1934)
       Society sleuth Philo Vance looks into a murder near a mysterious “dragon pool.” Cast: Warren William, Lyle Talbot, Eugene Pallette. Dir: H. Bruce Humberstone. BW-67 mins, TV-PG

10:30 AM Casino Murder Case, The (1935)
       Society sleuth Philo Vance takes on a series of murders at an aging dowager’s mansion. Cast: Paul Lukas, Rosalind Russell, Alison Skipworth. Dir: Edwin L. Marin. BW-83 mins, TV-G, CC

12:00 PM Garden Murder Case, The (1936)
       Society sleuth Philo Vance suspects dirty doings behind a mysterious series of suicides. Cast: Edmund Lowe, Virginia Bruce, Nat Pendleton. Dir: Edwin L. Marin. BW-61 mins, TV-G, CC

1:15 PM Calling Philo Vance (1939)
       Society sleuth Philo Vance tangles with foreign agents when he investigates the murder of an aircraft manufacturer. Cast: James Stephenson, Margot Stevenson, Henry O’Neill. Dir: William Clemens. BW-62 mins, TV-G, CC

2:30 PM Call of the Jungle (1944)
       An amateur detective in the South Seas tries to track down a pair of jewel thieves. Cast: Ann Corlo, James Bush, John Davidson. Dir: Phil Rosen. BW-60 mins, TV-PG

3:45 PM Jungle Jim (1948)
       The famed explorer tries to protect a lady scientist searching the jungle for a polio cure. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Virginia Grey, George Reeves. Dir: William A. Berke. BW-72 mins,

5:00 PM Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land (1952)
       The famed explorer leads an anthropologist to a lost civilization of giants. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Angela Greene, Jean Willes. Dir: Lew Landers. BW-65 mins,

6:15 PM Jungle Manhunt (1951)
       Jungle Jim searches for a famous football player lost in the jungle. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Bob Waterfield, Sheila Ryan. Dir: Lew Landers. BW-66 mins,

SUPER-SLEUTH.   RKO Radio Pictures, 1937. Jack Oakie, Ann Sothern, Eduardo Ciannelli, Alan Bruce, Edgar Kennedy, Joan Woodbury. Director: Benjamin Stoloff. Shown at Cinevent 20, Columbus OH, May 1988.

   Jack Oakie plays a popular film sleuth who tries to repeat his success on screen in an off-screen mystery, abetted by studio publicist Ann Sothern (trying to cover up his almost constant mishandling of his amateur sleuthing).

   Edgar Kennedy was good as James Gleason’s flat-footed assistant in the delightful Murder on the Blackboard, the second of the Hildegarde Withers/Inspector Piper collaborations with Edna Mae Oliver (1934), shown earlier in the day, but he was even better in Super-Sleuth.

   For once, Kennedy comes off as a sympathetic, even competent professional undone by an incompetent amateur, even though the bumbling “Edgar” character lurks somewhere not too far from the surface.

   The heavy is Eduardo Cianelli, the unforgettable “assassin” of Gunga Din, and the comic/suspenseful climax has a wax museum as the perfect setting for the conclusion of a film about on- and off-screen detecting.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   My usual sources have come up dry as far as finding suitable images to show you. Even more unexpectedly, the movie itself has proven to be elusive, although not impossible to find in the usual collector-to-collector markets. The photo of Edgar Kennedy, a standard publicity shot, source unknown, is not from Super-Sleuth, or at least I’m fairly sure it’s not.        — Steve

   My copy of Kiss Me Deadly (and every copy I’ve ever seen) clearly shows Hammer and Velda escaping into the surf and then the beach house being consumed in a mushroom cloud, so you can read it either way.

   The scene doesn’t show anything but the beach house consumed by the explosion, nor a mushroom cloud as big as the Trinity or Hiroshima ones we have seen on film. It seems to show a small contained explosion that only blows up the beach house. If Aldrich intended Mike and Velda to be killed, I assume they wouldn’t be shown reaching the surf, unless he intended ambiguity.

   Of course, if you want to get realistic they likely both got a lethal dose of radiation when the box was opened while they were in the house, much less when the house went up. But the film seems to show the explosion only consuming the beach house, and Mike and Velda are shown before that in the surf, not the house.

   I still think the death of Mike and Velda is like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey where viewers wrote their own ending. The only thing supporting the death of Hammer and Velda is that Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides really disliked Spillane and loathed Hammer.

   I have heard there is supposedly a cut where Mike and Velda do not reach the surf (and even that the scene where they do was imposed by the studio), but then again that may be fans reading their own interpretation into the film or even a bad copy edited poorly for showing on television. Again, if the intent of the film is Mike and Velda die, why show them reach the supposed safety of the surf?

   I’m reminded of taking my cousin’s five year old son to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. At the end when Newman and Redford are surrounded by the army and decide to go out in a blaze of glory they run outside firing their weapons wildly, the frame freezes on that image. With perfect five year old logic my cousin’s son turned to me and asked: “Did they kill all those guys?”

   The mind is a terrible waste — or whatever Dan Quayle said. Or maybe this is one of those glass half empty, half full things. At least Aldrich doesn’t have Mike and Velda climbing in a lead lined refrigerator like Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

   Or like the argument between Sam Jackson and Keven Spacey in The Negotiator — is Alan Ladd dead or alive in the last scene of Shane? In the case of Kiss Me Deadly and Shane, I think the pessimists are writing their own movie, but you never know, maybe my cousin’s five year old was right and Butch and Sundance wiped out the entire Bolivian army.

THE MIDNIGHT WARNING. Mayfair Pictures, 1932. Also released as Eyes of Mystery. William [Stage] Boyd, Claudia Dell, Huntley Gordon, Johnny Harron, Hooper Atchley. Director: Spencer Gordon Bennet.

    An oddball detective film that may have been inspired by an actual event, The Midnight Warning stars William “Stage” Boyd as detective Bill Cornish investigating a disappearance: an ailing young man who had just recently checked into a hotel with his sister.

    She has to travel to Utah on urgent business, but when she returns her brother has vanished and absolutely everyone claims not to remember him (even though we, the audience, know better).

    So obviously there’s a cover-up — but why? The solution for me (which I will not reveal) was not very satisfactory, when one considers all the nicely-wrought mystification that precedes the denouement.

    Even odder, at this late remove from historical events, are the reasons given — an economic upturn in the Depression being chief among them. (The recent election of FDR seems to have led people, among them Hollywood writers, to believe mistakenly that happy times were here again — and yes, that is germane to the film’s plot.)

    Not only is this an oddball movie but also the detective himself is slightly off kilter: Instead of the usual hardboiled, self-assertive personality type, Cornish is more than willing to push others into compromising and even potentially dangerous situations, at one point getting a friend to act as a cats-paw. Despite all that, however, he still comes across as something of an amiable antihero.

    There is a nod to Sherlock Holmes when, early in the film, someone takes long range shots at a character through a window — indeed, he is wounded without realizing how it happened. Detective Cornish then sets a trap using a mannequin to pin down the shooter’s location.

    Later films took up the theme of someone vanishing from crowded areas: So Long at the Fair (1950) and Dangerous Crossing (1953). (The latter is based on a radio play, “Cabin B-13,” by John Dickson Carr.)

    The Midnight Warning is an engrossing little mystery with a great buildup but a disappointing reveal. It’s available on DVD from Amazon.com for about eight dollars.

   I hope everyone has been following the long discussion that the most preceding post has developed into, especially if you’re interested in film noir, or even if you’re not. It will be a while longer, I’m sorry to say, before this blog gets back to its normal coverage of books as well as movies, but here’s a question that occurred to me after reading through the previous group of comments again.

   In discussing which movies are noir and which are not, both Walker Martin and David Vineyard (primarily, but not exclusively) have brought up a long long list of films to use as examples. Everyone knows which movies are noir and which are not — it’s all the in-betweener’s that cause the problems, no matter what definition you use.

   Here’s the problem. Reading through the comments, I’ve been adding movies to my “must see” list left and right, whether they’re noir or not. They all sound worth watching, but how? I’ve read somewhere that only 4% of the movies ever made are commercially available.

   And every time a new format comes along, more and more movies are left behind. From VHS to DVD, some movies didn’t make the upgrade. Now it’s DVD to Blue-Ray, and only those deemed most commercially advantageous will make that step up — and those generally seem to be recent movies in which I personally have little interest.

   Next, I presume, will be digital downloads, which in terms of commercial releases in cleaned-up editions, will probably bypass even more films not worth the attention of the giant conglomerates. Which leaves it to collectors and the underground market to keep many many old (and even recent) movies available for watching. For me, I’m going to stop with DVDs. No further upgrades for me.

   Which makes for a long preamble to my actual question. As Walker and David have pointed out, there are many books on Film Noir which list many films as being noir as well as many others deemed marginal. If you go to Amazon or similar sources, you won’t find them all, but if you were to go to ioffer.com or sell.com, many if not most of them do turn up — but not all.

   Here’s my question, directed primarily to Walker and David, but anyone else can jump in. What movies are there — and let’s stick to noir foremost, but why not include any crime movie — might you have been looking for and have not yet found a surviving copy to obtain on DVD as your own?

   What are the most wished-for crime films, ones that you’d most like to see, in other words, but so far don’t seem to exist, even as collectors-only copies?