SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR. RKO Radio Pictures, 1936. Richard Dix, Margaret Callahan, J. Carrol Naish, Erik Rhodes, Sheila Terry, Jed Prouty, Ray Mayer, Owen Davis Jr. Based on the story “Fugitive Road” by Erle Stanley Gardner. Director: Louis King.

   As far as I’ve been able to determine, the story “Fugitive Road” this action-packed B-movie is based on was serialized in This Week Magazine between 26 May and 7 July 1935. This was a small snippet of info I found on the Internet, and without any supporting evidence, I don’t think we ought to take it as unadulterated fact.

   My Gardner bibliography is buried somewhere. If anyone can corroborate this, and even better, let me know if the story was ever reprinted anywhere, be sure to let me know.

   Unfortunately I don’t think long runs of This Week Magazine are floating around any place easily accessible, and if it’s never been reprinted, good luck on ever reading this one.

   It’s a good story, though, assuming that the adaptation into the movie Special Investigator followed it even partially. What’s more, I think I’ve found the perfect actor to play the 1930s version of Perry Mason to a T: Richard Dix, square-jawed and resolute, whose most recent (and only other) film to have been reviewed on this blog was The Arizonian, a western in which (as you may recall) he played a Good Guy who comes to town to wipe out the Bad Guys.

   But in Special Investigator Dix plays Bill Fenwick, a high-powered L.A. defense attorney who’s lately been making a big name for himself getting even bigger criminal names walk free. But when tragedy strikes, and it does, his gives up both his practice and his girl friend (Sheila Terry), and goes undercover in a small town in Nevada, this time on the right side of the law.

   Along the way he meets – and falls in love with – another girl (Margaret Callahan), a spirited young lady who just happens to be tied in with the gang of crooks he’s determined to bring to justice. (Isn’t that always the way?)

   In a movie that times in at just over an hour’s running time, there’s as much action in Special Investigator as any B-western of the same era, straight and simple. There’s a minimum of actual detection, but on the other hand, there’s an equal minimum of funny sidekicks to have to deal with too.

   Recommended.

ROADHOUSE NIGHTS. Paramount, 1930. Helen Morgan, Charles Ruggles, Fred Kohler, Jimmy Durante, Fuller Mellish Jr., Leo Donnelly, Tammany Young, Joe King, Lou Clayton, Eddie Jackson. Story by Ben Hecht; screenplay by Garrett Fort based on the novel Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. Director: Hobart Henley. Shown at Cinevent 42, Columbus OH, May 2010.

   The casting of the vaudeville team of Durante, Clayton and Moore in this version of Hammett’s classic crime novel will surely make the heart of any film noir fan sink.

   (The introduction of a bumpkin sheriff into the Crime Club film The Black Doll, reviewed here, was surely already one example too many of how to ruin a crime novel on screen.)

   And the casting of Charles Ruggles, known principally for his skillful handling of comic roles, as an investigative reporter (substituting for Hammett’s Continental Op) is not a choice to arouse much interest in the classic crime film aficionado. So you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that this film was the one I felt the most responsibility to see and the one whose screening I most dreaded.

   It starts off well as Hogan (Fuller Mellish Jr.), a reporter on an investigative assignment for his Chicago paper, lights a match to check the address of a house on a dark street.

   He knocks, is admitted, and is almost immediately shot by a dark figure. A fellow reporter, Willie Bindbugel (Ruggles), is sent by his editor to check the disappearance of Hagan, who was working on a story on bootlegging in a small town on Lake Michigan.

   (In Hammett’s novel, it’s a newspaper publisher who’s murdered just as the Continental Op arrives in the crime-infested city of Personville, known by some of its local inhabitants as Poisonville.)

   Much of the action of the film takes place in a roadhouse operated by local crime boss Sam Horner (Fred Kohler), and it’s here that Willie encounters singer Lola Fagan (Morgan), whom he knew years ago and who is now the girl friend of Horner.

   The Durante trio is also performing in the roadhouse (and regretting it), but it’s the relationship of Willie and Lola that fuels the real drama of the film, as she struggles to find a way out of the explosive situation created by Willie’s arrival.

   As Willie catches on to the viper’s nest he’s fallen into, the events move rapidly toward a climactic scene in which Willie, apparently drunk, calls his editor and as he appears to insult him on line taps out a coded message that alerts the editor to the big shipment of bootleg liquor that’s to be picked up that night.

   It’s not a stretch to see the roadhouse standing in for Poisonville, with Willie as a somewhat unlikely but still effective substitution for the Op. But it’s not the traces of Hammett’s novel that keep the film afloat but the adroit performances by Ruggles, Morgan and Kohler make it work.

   And, if you’re wondering how the film was received on its release, I can report that excerpts from the New York Times and Variety reviews are, if not glowing, certainly positive.

THE RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND.   Warner Brothers, 1960. Ray Danton, Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse White, Simon Oakland, Robert Lowery, Judson Pratt, Warren Oates, Frank DeKova, Diane (Dyan) Cannon. Director: Budd Boetticher.   Novelization by Otis H. Gaylord, Bantam A2079, 1960.

   Rise and Fall is Budd Boetticher’s version of Richard III, with a preening megalomaniac rising to power by a combination of scheming and brutality, only to find that he has reached a rather precarious perch.

   Beyond that, there’s nothing much good you can say about the film: the plotting is flat and unsurprising, the action scenes few and rather pallid (particularly from a director like Boetticher, who crafted memorable action in The Tall T and Ride Lonesome) and the photography by Lucien Ballard is surprisingly flat, making the Warners back lot look like nothing more than a Warners back lot.

   Legs has one compelling virtue though, and that’s the performance of Ray Danton in the title role, perfectly realized by actor and director. Even when the film itself is plodding and predictable, Danton’s sharply-dressed, sexually magnetic hood keeps our attention.

   Boetticher’s westerns were always more concerned with the macho bad guys than the nominal heroes, just as his bullfighting movies focused more on the gaudy matadors than the charging bulls, and Legs Diamond carries this on with a hero/villain to whom Image is everything.

   It’s a memorable bit of acting/directing, and I just wish there were a better movie to go around it.

   If it had been anyone but Criterion putting out the DVD of The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, I might not have purchased it. But Criterion has so firmly established itself as the premium purveyor of quality movies onto quality DVDs, that I couldn’t resist.

   When I opened the handsome package, I was a little disappointed to find only one DVD inside. This usually means they didn’t go to too much trouble to put the whole thing together, and they weren’t interested in slipping in a lot of bonus features.

   What is included is a digitally-restored, high-definition version of the film itself, an audio commentary by director Peter Yates, stills, and a 44-page booklet on the film and its star Robert Mitchum.

   When you click “Play Movie,” the film surprisingly begins with only the Criterion logo, followed by the Paramount logo, then scene one. None of that annoying crap about FBI warnings and studio disclaimers. It looks and sounds terrific on my big screen HDTV from beginning to end. The color is crisp and the dialogue, which of course carries the whole story, is clear at all times. David Grusin’s restrained jazz soundtrack is a big plus.

   The commentary was only okay, though. I was expecting a lot more, I guess, from Yates. Something along the lines of what I got from Jules Dassin in Criterion’s outstanding release of his classic 1950 film noir, Night And The City. Dassin, who only did an interview and not the commentary on that DVD, went into the deepest details of that film and its making, while film scholar Glenn Erickson did a very creditable job on the commentary.

   Yates, in his commentary, talked about the things you might expect: shooting in Boston, how great all the actors were, and so on. But apart from his explanations on how they shot the hockey game scene and why George V. Higgins failed to get a screen credit for the script, I didn’t get too aroused. I felt he tended to drift off a little too often into talking about his other films. You know, if I’m watching The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, I don’t want to hear anything about Barbra Streisand movies.

   The booklet, however, is terrific. It begins with an essay by Kent Jones called “They Were Expendable” (no relation to the John Wayne movie), which offers far more insight into the making of the film than Yates’ commentary.

   For example, prior to shooting, Mitchum hung out with Whitey Bulger, notorious Boston gangster and the prototype for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed. Mitchum apparently took some heat for consorting with someone like Bulger, but he defended it, according to Jones, by saying that Bulger was himself associating with a “known criminal” in talking to Mitchum.

   The second essay is a profile on Mitchum called “The Last Celluloid Desperado.” Written by Grover Lewis, it includes contributions by co-stars Peter Boyle and Richard Jordan. It’s really all about Mitchum, though, and is a captivating look at his remarkable life, both in and out of films.

   One fact which jumped out at me was that Alex Rocco, who plays Jimmy Scalise, was a former member of the Boston Teamsters, who were continually linked to killings ordered by Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang. In fact, Rocco himself was indicted for murder, only to have the charges dropped through aggressive actions by his attorney, F Lee Bailey. He then made his way to Los Angeles, where he soon landed the role of Moe Greene in 1972’s The Godfather.

   Safe to say the booklet helps to make up for Yates’ lackluster commentary.

   Criterion, which has given us top-shelf DVD releases of seldom-seen films such as Straw Dogs, The Long Good Friday, and Lord Of The Flies, has scored again with The Friends Of Eddie Coyle. And like Yates says in the conclusion of his commentary, I hope this will expose the film to a whole new generation of viewers.

Editorial Comment:   For my review of the film itself, written nearly two years ago, before the DVD came out, you’ll have to go way back here on the blog.

A WORLD GONE MAD. Majestic Pictures/Capitol Film Exchange, 1934. Pat O’Brien, Evelyn Brent, Neil Hamilton, Mary Brian, Louis Calhern, J. Carroll Naish. Screen story: Edward T. Lowe. Director: Christy Cabanne. Shown at Cinevent 42, Columbus OH, May 2010.

   The very truncated cast list I’ve provided is only the tip of an iceberg that includes some talented supporting players. [A full accounting can be found on IMDB. Follow the link.]

   The program notes point out that while Majestic was a small company that might be classed among the Poverty Row studios, it was among the cream of the minors, able to make use of Universal’s facilities, and, because of a tie-in with Louis B. Mayer’s secretary Ida Koverman, able to draw on MGM technicians like editor Otis Garrett (later director of The Black Doll) and cameraman Ira Morgan.

   However, in spite of the connections with Universal and MGM, this played like a Warner Brothers production, with the fast paced script based on contemporary headlines that were often a feature of the WB product.

   What also impressed the writer of the program notes (Steve Haynes) was its connection with more recent events, in its portrayal of a pyramid scheme that benefits the men at the top, and milks its investors of their life-long savings.

   O’Brien plays a cynical reporter who’s close to both the few good guys and the crooks whose most odious and well-portrayed representative is played by Louis Calhern, while the chief “enforcer,” an assassin for hire, is strikingly played by J. Carrol Naish.

   Not a great film, but a very effective and often chilling one, although the effectiveness of at least one major scene is undercut by the unrestored print that allows the scene, meant to be played out in semi-darkness, to be screened in almost total darkness.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS. MGM, 1928. Lon Chaney, Anita Page, Carroll Nye, Wheeler Oakman, Mae Busch, Polly Moran. Director: Jack Conway. Shown at Cinecon 27, Hollywood CA, September 1993.

   Even with a missing reel, this Lon Chaney film was a stunning thriller. Chaney plays a tough New York detective on the trail of “Mile Away” Skeeter (who’s always a mile away from the crime when it happens).

   Chaney’s hard as nails, but he’s got a soft spot for Myrtle (played by Anita Page, a Cinecon guest) and for a lad who’s got in with mob and just needs the right influence to go straight. But then the lad falls for Myrtle, who’s mighty taken with him and…

   Chaney’s rough-hewn face is a perfect mask for the hard-nosed cop, but bruised the way his heart will be. Nobody could ring the changes on pathos like Chaney, probably the greatest of silent screen dramatic actors. A smashing performance and superb photography and direction.

BORIS VIAN – I Spit on Your Grave. First US edition: Audubon, paperback, 1971. Canongate Edinburgh, Scotland, pb, 2001. Reprinted as I Spit on Your Graves: Tamtam Books, softcover, 1998. Translation of J’Irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes, as by “Vernon Sullivan,” France, 1947.

Film: Audubon, 1962, as J’iral Cracher Sur Vos Tombes (I Spit on Your Grave). Christian Marquand, Antonella Lualdi, Paul Guers, Renate Ewert, Jean Sorel, Fernand Ledoux. Director: Michel Gast.

   Somewhere along the way last month I read Light in August, which I don’t propose to review here because Faulkner don’t need me to pimp for him. But it led me to read another two-bit paperback, obviously inspired by Faulkner’s work, I Spit on Your Grave.

   Grave was published in France in 1946, when the public there was crazy for American hard-boiled books and movies (unavailable there since 1940) and would apparently devour anything that looked appropriately tough and western, including palpable fakes like Lemmy Caution and James Hadley Chase — I digress, but it explains how I Spit on Your Grave was promoted as a French translation of an American book, when in fact it was written by one Boris Vian, who was about as American as Pepe le Pew.

   Surprisingly, though, this is quite well done. The nameless narrator, a black man passing for white (like Joe Christmas in Faulkner’s book) sets us somewhere in the southern U.S. and tells of his quest for vengeance for the lynching of his brother. Said vengeance becomes a nasty bit of business as the narrator insinuates himself into a small town and works his way around to seducing the daughters of the local rich folk — with a view to something even worse to come…

   Vian ain’t no Faulkner, but that’s not always a bad thing; he evokes the small town colorfully, his prose is sharp and well-judged and the tone is pleasingly nasty, veering toward the pornographic as the narrator exacts his baroque retribution. And I should warn you that this book contains graphic violence one seldom encounters even now in mainstream books.

   The book itself had an interesting history: when a copy was found near the body of a murdered woman (with significant passages underlined) the publishers were charged with pandering obscenity and the true story of its writing emerged.

   This only made it more popular, and it was filmed in 1959. The movie is a low-budget affair that runs out of steam somewhere along the way and softens the ending, but it evokes the dusty desperation of a one-whore town surprisingly well for a film made entirely in France and cast with badly-dubbed French actors.

   I liked it myself, but there’s a story that Vian went to a preview, screamed “What is this sh*t?!” and fell over dead.

   It’s a nice story, anyway.

Editorial Comment: Most sources state the date of the French edition as 1946, as does Dan. The year 1947 that I stated in the opening credits is that as given by Al Hubin in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. He’s on a vacation cruise right now, but I’ll ask him to help sort out this small disparity when he gets back.

J. H. WALLIS – Once Off Guard. E.P. Dutton, hardcover, 1942. Also published as: The Woman in the Window. World, 1944. Paperback reprints: Mercury Mystery #81, 1944, abridged; Armed Forces Edition #723, 1945, as The Woman in the Window; Popular Library #385, 1951, abridged.

    ● Filmed as The Woman in the Window: RKO, 1944. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Edmund Breon, Dan Duryea. Screenwriter: Nunnally Johnson. Director: Fritz Lang.

   I like to do the book/movie thing (read a few chapters in the book each day, then watch the corresponding scenes of the film that night) and got a chance last week with The Woman in the Window, originally published back in 1942 as Once Off Guard by J.H. Wallis and filmed by Fox in ’44.

   Wallis’s book is an oddly depressing read, tense and claustrophobic, told almost entirely from the point of view of Professor Richard Wanley, who, overcome by reading erotic poetry of ancient Greece, gets involved with a tart and suddenly has to kill her sugar-daddy in self-defense.

   Terrified of scandal and genuinely reluctant to hurt his wife, Wanley and the tart cover up the crime and hide the body, leading to a world of complications.

   The book, as I say, gets a bit depressing as Wanley frets and sweats over little things that loom large in his guilty conscience, sure that everyone notices tiny clues that link him to the killing, and it gets worse yet when the tart gets a visit from a prospective blackmailer. All of which leads to more murder, more guilt and a neat, ironic ending. An involving read, but not much fun.

   So when Fox took this on for a movie, they gave it to writer Nunnally Johnson, who could be depended on to lighten things up, and director Fritz Lang, whose sense of fatalism was perfectly suited to the material.

   The result is just as involving as Wallis’s book, but much less claustrophobic. Characters who seem merely looming presences in the book get neatly fleshed out in the movie by competent players like Raymond Massey, Dan Duryea and Edmund Breon (whom some may remember as the lascivious music box collector in the Sherlock Holmes flick, Dressed to Kill).

   Also, we get to see things in the movie that in the book are only imagined by Wanley, opening things out a bit. Finally, there’s a twist ending, followed by a twist on a twist, handled beautifully by Lang in a cinematic flourish where he abruptly changes scenes without cutting.

   Think of that: he actually switches scenes without cutting! A friend of mine once asked the director (by then quite aged and revered) how he did this, and Lang merely smiled and said some mysteries were best left as mysteries.

   I suspect he just didn’t remember.

Bio-Bibliographical Data:   James Harold Wallis, 1885-1958, was the author of ten mystery and crime fiction novels for Dutton between 1931 and 1943, the first six of which were cases for Inspector Wilton Jacks. Says Al Hubin of Wallis in Crime Fiction IV: Born in Iowa, educated at Yale; newspaperman in Iowa turned full-time writer in New York.

THE LOOKOUT. Miramax, 2007. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Sergio Di Zio. Screenwriter & director: Scott Frank.

   Here’s a crime film that I doubt ever played anywhere in Connecticut, and if it did, it passed through with no notice at all.

   It’s flawed, perhaps even fatally, but the performances done to perfection all the way through, some of which I’ll remember for a long time, and I recommend the movie highly. Two thumbs up, using both hands.

   Now that I have the preliminaries out of the way, what’s it about? Even as the movie begins, very very slowly in paving its own deliberate way, the title’s there in your mind, and all odds are that as you’re watching, you’ll know, like me, exactly what’s going to happen, eventually.

   What this is, is the story of Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from beginning to end. A star hockey player in high school, his world is turned upside down when a terrific automobile accident kills the couple in back seat, forces the amputation of his girl friend’s leg – she was sitting in the passenger seat beside him – he was driving, and it was his fault – and he’s trying to put something that resembles a life back together again.

   Gordon-Levitt is a marvelous young actor. He could have played his character’s obviously diminished mental capabilities too broadly, so that we can’t possibly help but take notice, but what he does, he does subtly, and he does it right. Just a bit of clumsiness now, a touch of awkwardness then, and in between, stopping ever once in while to take out his notebook to be sure he knows what he should be doing next.

   (One flaw here is the unanswered question as to how Chris Pratt would ever be allowed to drive a car, but he does; otherwise there’d be no way for him to get to the bank where he works as the overnight janitor. He hopes to work his way up to a teller.)

   I used the word Bank just a second ago. As soon as you the viewer see this, and you think of the movie’s title, you say to yourself, I know where this movie’s going. And you’d be right.

   Two more good performances. First by Matthew Goode, as the scummy but utterly convincing fellow who convinces Chris that robbing the bank would be a good idea, and secondly by Isla Fisher, the girl who helps in the convincing part by seducing Chris – there’s no better word for it – into taking on the role they have planned for him – that being, of course, the double-barreled task of letting Goode’s gang in and acting as Lookout once they do.

   (Another flaw is that once she’s played her part, Isla Fisher’s character has no place to go, and she flat out disappears from the rest of the movie.)

   The bank robbery does not go well (do they ever?) and we’ll leave it at that, although there is still a long portion of the movie yet to go. Those who have been waiting for the action to start — well, their patience is at last rewarded.

   At which point in these comments I see I have not mentioned Jeff Daniels, and I should have. He plays Chris’s roommate Lewis in the apartment they share.

   They make a good twosome, as Lewis is blind, but outwardly cheerful about it. (Inwardly we are not so sure.) It is not easy playing someone who’s blind, but Daniels, brusque and slightly overpowering in the role, is nonetheless charming and perhaps not as carefree as he lets on.

   Pfui. When I sat down and started writing this review, I intended to keep it short. And here am I telling you the whole story. But I’ve gone back over what I’ve written, and I don’t see anything I’d care to cut. Sorry.

   (One final flaw. This movie, carefully paced, ends more happily than it has any right to be. I’ll stop here. If you see the movie, or if you have seen it, you’ll know what I’m saying. Not that I have anything against happy endings, but if I’d been in charge, I’d have made some changes, if you know what I mean.)

ELEAZAR LIPSKY – The Kiss of Death. Penguin #642, US, paperback original, 1947. Reprinted as The Hoodlum: Lion #161, paperback, 1953. Also reprinted by Dell (D396) under its original title, 1961.

    ● Film: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1947 (with Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray & Richard Widmark; screenwriters: Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer; director: Henry Hathaway).

    ● Film: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958, as The Fiend Who Walked the West (with Robert Evans, Hugh O’Brian, Linda Cristal and Stephen McNally; screenwriters: Harry Brown and Philip Yordan; director: Gordon Douglas).

   Following the two Errol Flynn books [reviewed here ], I moved on then to a sub-sub-genre known to cineastes as “Re-makes of Old Victor Mature Movies” starting with Kiss of Death (Fox, 1947) which was reincarnated as The Fiend Who Walked the West (Fox, 1958).

   Kiss of Death comes from a 1947 novel of the same name by Eleazar Lipsky, a former prosecutor who turned to writing and did rather well at it. It’s a taut, unglamorous tale about a professional crook betrayed by his own kind, struggling to keep to his personal code of ethics.

   Tightly told, and peopled with characters who seem quite ordinary and very real in Lipsky’s muted but evocative prose, it reads very real at times. There’s even an interesting bit where two of the characters go to a movie that sounds a lot like The Blue Dahlia (Paramount, 1946). Mosty, though, it’s quiet, gritty and very effective.

   Filmed the same year at Fox, the movie benefits from vigorous direction by Henry Hathaway, evocative photography on New York locations, and convincing performances all around, including the much-maligned Victor Mature, who projects his greasy machismo with effortless ease against some showy co-stars.

   A nice job, particularly since he’s up against Richard Widmark’s star-making debut as a sadistic killer who gets all the best scenes. One of Widmark’s bits has become a movie icon (as you see here) but I was more impressed by a simple scene where the snarling killer is seen through a gap in a curtain, approaching the camera: the nearer he gets, the less we see of his face, till all that’s left is the snarl — like a baleful Cheshire cat from some malevolent Wonderland, ready to devour something. One of the scariest bits I’ve seen outside the monster movies.

   Kiss of Death was so successful they re-made it as The Fiend Who Walked the West in 1958, with Hugh O’Brien taking the Victor Mature role, and doing rather well with it.

   O’Brien’s stoic acting somehow lends itself to a character trying to keep his emotions in check as he plays cat-and-mouse with a sadistic killer, and things are helped along considerably by punchy direction from Gordon Douglas, who could do anything with a straight face.

   Here he provides some explosive action and solid, western-style suspense, despite a somewhat jarring effect from time to time when the soundtrack erupts into back-ground music borrowed from The Day the Earth Stood Still. He also gets to use his action trademark, a violent shoot-out with one fighter returning fire while visibly getting hit. Fun stuff.

Editorial Comment:   Dan didn’t mention it, so I didn’t include it in the info above, but the book was made into a film a third time, also by Twentieth Century-Fox, in 1995. This most recent version starred David Caruso, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage & Helen Hunt. I wish I could tell you more about it, but somehow I missed this one, and this is all I know.