STREET OF SHADOWS. Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (UK) / Lippert Pictures (US), 1953. Released as The Shadow Man in the US. Cesar Romero, Kay Kendall, Edward Underdown, Victor Maddern, Simone Silva. Based on the novel The Creaking Chair by Laurence Meynell. Screenwriter & director: Richard Vernon.

   Laurence Meynell, to begin at what’s probably the wrong (but easiest) place to start, is in all likelihood unknown to all but the keenest of detective fiction fans, but he had one of the longest careers in the business, with his first mystery novel coming out in 1928 and his last in 1988 (when he was 89).

   He also wrote non-fiction, poetry, children’s books and more. For a short online tribute to him, should you be interested, go here.

   The book that Street of Shadows was based on, The Creaking Chair (1941), isn’t one I’ve happened to read, so whether the movie has any resemblance to it, I cannot tell you. It came to me (the film, that is) in DVD form, as part of a box set of Forgotten Noir films, not that in 1953 they had any idea that they were making noir films, only films with crime and lots of dark shadows, all the better to hide how few dollars (or pounds, rather) there were involved with the budget in making them.

   I will make no jokes about the movies in this set being “Forgotten.” I will point out that the version of Street of Shadows in this set is seven minutes longer than the one released in the US, so you will get your money’s worth that way, if nothing more. (And for the life of me, I cannot figure out what seven minutes might have been cut. The plot’s so compact that leaving anything out would leave the story line incomprehensible, or so it would seem to me.)

   All seriousness aside, there are a couple of reasons for watching this movie, and I’m going to tell you right away that the story line isn’t particularly one of its strong suits. But Cesar Romero, whether he was playing the Cisco Kid or The Joker on the Batman TV series, never turned in a bad performance. Larger than life, perhaps, as he is here as Luigi, owner of a pinball club in London’s Soho district, but as always, he is also as natural before the camera as any actor I can think of.

   In Street of Shadows he is attracted to Barbara Gale, the wife of a man who’s bored with her, a fact that I can neither understand nor explain to you, since she’s a second reason for watching this movie, the most exquisitely beautiful Kay Kendall, married later to Rex Harrison not long before her tragic death from leukemia at the age of only 33.

   Also notable in the cast is Victor Maddern as Luigi’s crippled pug-ugly janitor “Limpy,” who’s never had a real date with a woman, and Simone Silva (of Robert Mitchum fame) as Angele Abbé, the girl that Luigi has broken up with. When she’s found dead in Luigi’s penny arcade, the eyes of the police turn directly to him — and on the run he goes, in order to clear himself.

   Don’t go looking for a major detective story here, even though an inspector from Scotland Yard has a sizable role to play (Edward Underdown).

   Watch this instead for the almost incessantly dark settings, Cesar Romero’s strong performance, to see Kay Kendall at the height of her stylish beauty, and for several of the mechanical devices in Luigi’s arcade, including a head-bobbing, banjo-playing clown, the latter adding noisily to the atmosphere, along with a jukebox in grand 1950s style that I really wouldn’t mind having myself.

   Previously on this blog: Where the Spies Are (1966).

THE LIQUIDATOR. MGM, 1965. Rod Taylor, Jill St. John, Trevor Howard, Wilfred Hyde-White, Akim Tamaroff, David Tomlinson, Eric Sykes. Song over opening credits sung by Shirley Bassey. Based on the novel by John Gardner. Director: Jack Cardiff.

   The driving Bondian theme song by Shirley Bassey, accompanied by handsomely done animated titles, lets you know what you are in for in this well done British spy spoof based on John Gardner’s Boysie Oakes novels.

   Rod Taylor is well cast as Boysie, a handsome amoral bungler, coward, and general screw-up, who is mistaken by Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard at his best) of MI6 for a cold blooded killer when they meet during the fall of Nazi-held Paris.

   Twenty years later Mostyn is second in command of MI6, and a series of defections and had headlines has convinced his boss (Hyde-White) that what the service needs is an executioner, a liquidator who will rid them of embarrassment before it gets that far.

   Mostyn remembers Boysie, whom he finds burying his partner (they owned a pub together) whose wife he has been having an affair with.

   Mostyn jumps to conclusions, and before he can protest, Boysie finds himself the private executioner for the British Secret Service.

   And it isn’t a bad life. He has a lush apartment, a nice stipend, a sexy sports car, a parade of beautiful girls, and there is always the sardonic Mostyn’s secretary Jill St. John — if only there wasn’t that silly rule about inter-service romance.

   Then the first problem arises. They actually want Boysie to kill some one.

   He does his best, but he just can’t manage it. But rather than give up his new life, he finds an out. Charlie Griffin is a sort of private version of Boysie, a likable Cockney (Eric Sykes) who finds this new political work both fulfilling and challenging. A perfect working relationship is formed.

   Seems Boysie has it all now. If he could only control that libido.

   Which is the one thing he can’t control. So he plans a little getaway with St. John on the Cote d’Azur. Just pull the wool over Mostyn’s eyes and have a little fun.

   You know that won’t go well, and it doesn’t. Boysie is captured by a Soviet agent (Akim Tamiroff) and rescued by an annoying David Tomlinson, who puts him and St. John under house arrest.

   But Boysie is as lucky as usual. They need him. There is a mission, a security test at an RAF base (wouldn’t you know it, just the idea of flying makes Boysie deathly ill), a mock assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.

   Which is how Boysie ends up the only conscious person on a top secret RAF fighter plane with no idea how to land the thing.

   Thanks to the cast and a script that closely follows Gardner’s novel, this spy spoof works both as a send-up of Bond and as damn good spy film on its own.

   Taylor’s way around a reaction shot and his ability to look dashing and frightened out of his wits at the same time make him an ideal Boysie, and the direction by former cinematographer Cardiff is tight and well paced.

   Howard, St. John ( who never got her due as an actress), Sykes, and Tomlinson are all superior, and you will find yourself humming the title song even if you don’t want to.

   Gardner, a former commando who turned leftist Church of England reverend, wrote Boysie as a reaction to the Bond phenomena, proving himself a serious suspense and spy novelist. He guided Boysie, Moystn, and Griffin through ten novels with ironic endings, and then in the greatest irony, he ended up writing fourteen books about James Bond himself.

   Boysie never made it to the screen again, but this was still one of the brightest moments of the spy craze.

Coming soon:

   Agent 8 3/4 (1964) with Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Koscina.

Editorial Comment: For my review of this same film, check it out here, posted in July of last year on this blog.

LAWRENCE BLOCK – Burglars Can’t Be Choosers. Random House, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints include: Jove, 1978; Pocket, 1983; Onyx, 1995; Harper Torch, 2004.

   Bernie Rhodenbarr is no ordinary burglar; he is a professional of finesse, charm, and good common sense. At least that is what he tells himself when he enters an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he has been commissioned to find a blue leather box — a box he has been advised not to open.

   Unfortunately, the box isn’t where it should be, nor is there anything else of interest, and Bernie is about to depart when the cops arrive. No novice at such problems, he successfully bribes the officers with his advance on the burglary commission, and is about to take his leave once more when one of them turns up a body in the bedroom.

   The officer has the grace to faint on the Bokhara carpet; the other is distracted; and Bernie flees.

   From here on out, Mr. Rhodenbarr is engaged in a flight to keep himself free, and a quest to find out just who attempted to frame him for the murder of entrepreneur J. Francis Flaxford-tenant of the apartment he was set up to burgle. There are a lot of amusing moments, a surprise roommate for Bernie, and a good amount of burglar lore.

   Also entertaining are The Burglar in the Closet (1978), The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979), The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (1980), and The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (1983).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Burglar in the Closet. Random House, hardcover, 1978. Paperback reprints include: Pocket, 1981; Signet, 1997. Film: Warner, 1987, as Burglar, with Whoopi Goldberg as Bernie (as in short for Bernice).

   In Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, when last we met our favorite breaking-and-entering expert, Bernie Rhodenbarr, he was nabbed red-handed in an apartment which, quite unknown to him, came complete with a corpse in the bedroom.

   This time, he checks around first. While the murder’s being committed, he finds himself accidentally locked up in a closet instead. The victim? No one important, only his dentist’s not-so-favorite ex-wife.

   So, in the midst of the comedy routines provided by dentistry and other irreverent views of the world, Bernie is forced once again to become a detective on the run — burglars find it terribly difficult to get policemen to be sympathetic to their job-related problems. The end result is fast, fresh, breezy, and wow, was I slow on the clues!

Bernie Rhodenbarr novels:

Short stories:

LYON MEARSON – Phantom Fingers. Macaulay, hardcover, 1927. Hutchinson, UK, hc, 1929.

   Damon Knight, I believe it was, once reviewed what he called an “idiot novel,” wherein the hero was an idiot and the heroine was an idiot, but fortunately the villain was a super-idiot. This novel qualifies for that description.

   The Grand Theatre in New York City is about to put on a new play. The management and the two stars receive threatening letters — signed variously “Pro Bono Publico,” “Constant Reader,” and “A Well-Wisher,” affording the only intentional humor in the novel. If the male lead attempts to make love to the female star on the stage, he Is doomed, says the threatener.

   The play takes place, and the male star does indeed die, being strangled and then having his neck broken by some invisible agency in full view of the audience and almost in full view of the detective in the case, Steve Muirhead, who would have seen it from the beginning if he had been paying attention.

   Muirhead is more alert on the second occasion when an understudy takes over the role and begins being choked on stage, again by an invisible hand. With a visible knife Muirhead stabs the invisible hand and saves the understudy’s life.

   Does Muirhead remember his brave and intelligent — his only one — act? No. He puts the knife away somewhere safe and is thus at the mercy of the villain.

   Murder and attempted murder, and Muirhead is the sole policeman involved in the investigation. The rest of the force is directing traffic, one gathers. “A fate worse than death” is mentioned often enough in regard to the heroine to make one suspect that the author was trying to titillate his readers since he couldn’t entertain them.

   The only mysteries worth thinking about here are how Muirhead’s man Briggs becomes Muirhead’s man Grigson a few pages later and how this wretched amalgamation of mystery and science fiction went into a third printing.

   How it got published originally I will let others ponder.

   Bibliographic Data:   [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

MEARSON, LYON. 1888-1966. Born in Montreal; educated at New York Law School; art critic for New York Evening Mail.
      Footsteps in the Dark. Macaulay, 1927; Hutchinson, 1928. [Murder mystery revolving around an “oriental” decorated house and a stack of gold.]

      Phantom Fingers. Macaulay, 1927; Hutchinson, 1929.
      The Whisper on the Stair. Macaulay, 1924; Hutchinson, 1924.

DAVID STONE – The Orpheus Deception. Jove, paperback reprint; 1st printing, April 2009. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, March 2008.

   This book begins, so far as I can tell, exactly where the previous book in the series leaves off. That book would be The Echelon Vendetta, the first Micah Dalton adventure (which I have not read), and David Stone’s first book. Here’s some information about him, taken directly from his website:

   As for Micah Dalton, a covert CIA operative – sort of a “cleaner,” if you will – is now on the outs with his superiors, but in this second book – a long, over-sized 532 page novel – he quickly finds himself quickly enough back in the game, something to do with a pirated oil tanker in the South China Sea, a microbiological lab, nerve gas (or something similar), and without going into details, it’s one heck of a ride and one that’s surprisingly easy to read.

   To explain. Stone’s bold, picturesque style of writing, plus more than a dollop of humor, makes up for the fact that for well over 100 pages the story line in the first book is still being rehashed, with characters still being introduced from that book, and all it takes for a new reader to get into the swing of things. (Me!)

   But readers can’t be held responsible for remembering all of the details of all of the books they’ve read, and unless they read them in order, one after the other, I fear they’re up the same river in the same canoe and without the same paddle as I. But around page 118 – I just went back and looked – the story really begins, and from that point on, it’s in high gear all the way.

   To give you a taste of the souffle – that is to say Stone’s descriptive ability and general overall point of view, though he will surprise you on the latter, or at least several times he did me – here’s a long quote from the beginning of Chapter 13, or for the more precision-minded among us, page 172:

   Besides the descriptions and the point of views and the dollop of humor, there is just enough violence to keep the less-jaded thriller fans happy, and an ending that even improves on James Bond films, if that could be so, and you’ll have to read the book yourself to tell me if I’m right or not.

   In the wake of the success of Goldfinger, spy films were everywhere. Some were great, some awful, and some forgettable, but among the best were some well-remembered little films like the three British films to be reviewed here.

WHERE THE SPIES ARE. MGM, 1966. David Niven, Françoise Dorléac, Nigel Davenport, John Le Messurier, Cyril Cussack, Eric Pohlmann. Screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz, Val Guest & James Leasor based on his novel Passport to Oblivion. Directed by Val Guest.

   One of the brightest of the spy spoofs that appeared in the wake of the Bond craze that took off with the success of Goldfinger, this film was based on the first novel in the James Leasor’s Dr. Jason Love series.

   Leasor was a British thriller writer who also wrote historical fiction and popular history (Nemesis, The Sea Wolves, etc).

   In the film version, David Niven (who is a bit older than the character in the books, but otherwise perfect) is Dr. Love, a country GP who once did a bit of intelligence work. He’s approached for a simple mission that should be a holiday and enticed into it because he collects vintage Cords. That’s part of his cover as well.

   What could go wrong?

   Just about everything.

   First some one blows his plane up, then his contact is killed. Love stumbles on a Soviet-backed assassination plot designed to set the Middle East on fire. He’s betrayed by the beautiful Dorléac, damn near killed, and ends up being kidnapped on a Soviet ‘peace mission’ flight and has to arrange a last minute Arctic escape.

   A terrific cast and the personable Niven make this one a pleasure. The script is smart, and for once funny. Add into the mix good location filming and a superior cast, and you have a film that works both as a spy film, a comedy, and a spoof. And it doesn’t hurt that Niven was not only a friend of Ian Fleming, but one of the real life models for James Bond (a role he only played in the disappointing spoof Casino Royale).

   This one is well worth catching. First class all the way.

Coming soon:

   The Liquidator (1965) with Rod Taylor, Trevor Howard and Jill St. John.

SECONDS. Paramount, 1966. Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Will Geer, Jeff Corey, Richard Anderson, Frances Reid, Murray Hamilton. Based on the novel by David Ely. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Director: John Frankenheimer.

   There are moments in the movie, filmed in glorious black-and-white, that are among the creepiest — not the scariest, per se — but the get-under-your-skin or the into-your-mind-and-can’t-get-it-out kind of nightmares that haven’t been surpassed by any other film that I’ve seen in a long, long time.

   Basic scenario: a secret organization has discovered ways of changing your identity, if you’ve gotten tired and weary of the one have, into another.

   It takes a skilled medical staff, a large support system, and a lot of stuff you really don’t want to ask about — and voila! An aging banker (John Randolph) whose marriage has long ago had all its passion sucked out of it becomes someone who looks a lot like Rock Hudson.

   And if things don’t go well, don’t ask about that either.

   A lot of the credit for what makes this movie work as well as it does has to go to cinematographer James Wong Howe, who uses innovative lighting, extreme closeups, high angle shots and hand-held camera work to create a world of depressive darkness that’s infinitely capable of causing heartfelt, emotional screaming not so much verbally — although there is that, too — but on the inside, where it really counts.

   It’s what’s in our heads that makes who we are, no matter how well disguise our facades to the world, and the older you get, the more you’re aware of that, and the harder it is to get away from it.

   It’s not an entirely successful movie, though, and by taking a few days to think it over, I believe I know why, at least in part. Individual scenes are often small gems, but there’s no cohesion, not enough connective tissue between them.

   It’s not that there’s not enough back story, as I thought at first — the actors in this film are utterly perfect in their parts, and we can see from their faces alone who they are and why they are doing what they are doing — and also that they’re wrong, most of them, or evil without knowing that they are and convinced they’re doing good; or in case of others, that they’re making the right decisions, only to find out that perhaps they’re not.

   Sagging the most is the middle of the movie, the transition from opening scenes to end game that needs the most support and doesn’t quite get it, wherein Arthur Hamilton/Tony Wilson begins to discover, belatedly, that a new body is not enough, not even when he meets a good-looking neighbor on a lonely California beach (Salome Jens).

   A long wine-crushing festival with a commune of naked hippies is followed by an even longer cocktail party literally from hell, but neither packs a wallop as solid as, well, when Tony Wilson does try the impossible: to go home again.

   A foolish attempt, that. It can’t be done.

The Annual Animation Program. Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

    It’s always a treat to see vintage cartoons (especially the color shorts in eye-popping color) on a decent sized screen. The well-chosen program featured some familiar (and readily available) shorts, along with some that had me shopping in the dealers’ room for decent copies on under-the-counter DVDs.

    There are always some Disney shorts, but the Disney franchise has been so generous in recent years with their deluxe sets compiled from the company archives that the main pleasure of viewing them is in being reminded how spectacular Disney’s contribution to the art of animation has been.

    “The Pied Piper” (1935) is from the Silly Symphony series and features a score by Leigh Harline whose contribution (he would later win an Oscar for his work on Pinocchio) greatly enhances the charm of this classic cartoon.

    The Disney cartoons of the 1940s continued the tradition of superb animation artistry, but few people would claim they are as consistently funny as the Warner Brothers cartoons of that decade.

    Still, Donald, who had replaced Mickey as the unquestionable star of the Disney stable of characters, could usually be counted on for some expert comic turns and did so again in “Drip Dippy Donald” (1948), where he’s trying to sleep and keeps getting waked up by a dripping faucet that eventually takes on nightmarish proportions.

    There was the familiar Betty Boop black-and-white classic “Mother Goose Land,” a 1933 short that featured a still sexy Betty, a turn that would be ended by the Production Code and would, in effect, precipitate the decline in Betty’s popularity.

    A later Popeye cartoon, “Service with a Guile” (1946), was entertaining, but the continuous flow of inspired animation that distinguished the ’30s Fleischer product was largely missing from this routine effort.

    Two Walter Lantz cartoons, “Under the Spreading Blacksmith Shop” (1942) and “Swing Your Partner” (1943), served to remind me of how little I care for most of the Lantz-produced cartoons.

    A controversial Bugs Bunny short, “All This and Rabbit Stew” (1941), initiated the screening of three politically incorrect shorts, now infrequently shown because of their use of black stereotypes. The Elmer Fudd role as Bugs’ hapless antagonist is here taken by a black hunter, based on the popular but offensive (to many people) comedian Stepin Fetchit.

   The cartoon, not credited to Tex Avery but reputedly one of the last he directed before leaving Warner Brothers for MGM, If not one of his best efforts, still contained elements of the inventive slapstick that betrays the inimitable Avery touch.

   The other two shorts from that category were probably two of the most creative of the morning’s program.

   The racial stereotypes in Avery’s charming and very funny “Half Pint Pygmy” (1948) are much less blatant than those in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, but in Bob Clampett’s “Tin Pan Alley Cats” (1943), a graphically stunning short, they’re in full flower (as it were), as a musician, a recognizable caricature of Fats Waller, finds himself transported into a Surrealist landscape that is mostly lifted from “Porky in Wackyland,” a 1938 release also directed by Clampett.

   The black and white original was redrawn and reshot in dazzling technicolor, with an array of fantastic creatures who seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to some of Boris Artzybasheff’s other-worldly inventions.

   In any event, this was an exhilarating experience that propelled me into the dealers’ room where I found a copy in a set that contains all of the notorious racially and politically incorrect cartoons that you can find on YouTube on a good day.

NEW TRICKS. BBC. Season Five [eight episodes]: 07 July 2008 to 25 August 2008.

   Last summer we had the fifth series (eight one-hour stories, no adverts) of this very popular programme. It has a nice set-up: a cold case team of three cynical ex-coppers (played by well know veteran actors Alun Armstrong, James Bolan and Denis Waterman) under the supervision of a female superintendent whose career has been sidelined (Amanda Redman).

   The characters are good and the humour and camaraderie are well done, but unfortunately the plots are rather a let down. The humour is obviously paramount to the producers and the logic of the plot seems to be given little thought.

   This is a pity as (as I’ve banged on about before) the pilot of this series was tremendous but, as often happens, the characterisation was sacrificed to promote the humour.

NOTES:   Season Six is currently in progress, 16 July 2009 to 27 August 2009. Season One will be available on DVD next week in the US.