GERALD BUTLER – Mad with Much Heart. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1946. Originally published in the UK by Jarrolds, hardcover, 1945.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND. RKO, 1952. Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino, Ward Bond, Sumner Williams, Charles Kemper, Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe, Cleo Moore and Olive Carey. Screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides and Nicholas Ray. Directed by Nicholas Ray. Currently available for streaming on TCM.

    I was much impressed with Butler’s first novel, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, and While Mad with Much Heart isn’t quite as well-built, there’s still much to be glad of. It’s a terse chase story, set in the snow-bound English countryside, with Inspector James Wilson detailed from Scotland Yard to help the locals pursue a mad killer who has attacked two schoolgirls. As the story spins out, though, Wilson has less trouble with the killer than he has dealing with the vengeance-crazed father of one of the girls, with the killer’s blind sister, and with his own loneliness and self-doubt.

   This isn’t really enough to carry a story successfully (asked for his opinion, Raymond Chandler advised against filming it), but Butler does a very nice job conveying the physical effort of running and driving through deep snow, the slippery suspense of a slow-motion car-chase over icy country lanes, and the sheer exhaustion of mind and body brought on by the cold. Somehow the visceral quality of the story and his prose keeps one turning the pages.

   The film that John Houseman and Nicholas Ray made out of this despite Chandler’s advice is an oddly moving affair, rather disjointed (like many RKO films under Howard Hughes’ regime) and all the better for it. It opens with twenty minutes of sheer Big City noir, with Robert Ryan as a psychotic cop on the verge of murder, then shifts neatly to the snowbound countryside, where Ryan sees his own violence mirrored in the rampaging father (a fine performance by Ward Bond) setting up one of those narrative metaphors that Ray did so well: If Ryan can keep the berserk parent from blasting the frightened fugitive, then maybe (?) he can control his own sickness.

   This is the sort of film on which Nicholas Ray built his reputation. The early city-set scenes are purest noir, with George E. Diskant’s camera sliding fluidly through seedy bars, sleazy apartment houses, and shadowy alleys, punctuated by short bursts of jerky hand-held shots to accentuate the violence. And when we move out into the country, Ray and Diskant impart the feel of icy snowscapes, jagged rocks, and rustic farms just as vividly.

   Then there’s the plu-perfect playing, from the sleazy bit players, to Robert Ryan at the edge of violence, Ward Bond well over the top, charging through a landscape that barely holds him, and in the midst of this Ida Lupino serenely dominating the screen, while Sumner Williams as her disturbed brother darts about like some dangerously wounded animal.

   In short, this is a totally unique film, done with consummate artistry, and if you’ve been a good little boy-or-girl this year, you owe yourself a viewing.

THE ITALIAN JOB. Paramount Pictures, UK/US, 1969. Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill, Maggie Blye, Rossano Brazzi. Screenwriter: Troy Kennedy-Martin. Director: Peter Collinson. Currently streaming on several platforms, including Amazon Prime Video (but ending there tomorrow).

   When I spotted this movie on Amazon Prime on Monday, but that it was ending there soon, I thought I’d better finally see it while I could, and I’m glad I did. I saw the remake when it came out, but how I’d let this one get by me for so long, I have no explanation.

   It is a heist film, of course, and as usual, heist films take a long time getting around to the heist itself: the planning, the gathering together of the people to pull it off, the obstacles they face while doing so. (In this case, since this particular heist is being pulled off in Italy by a high level gang of British drivers and miscellaneous thugs under the leadership of Michael Caine’s character, and the overall backing, moneywise, of criminal mastermind Noël Coward, safely ensconced in penitentiary, it is the Mafia).

   But in all heist films, or 99.5 percent of them, as meticulously planned as the are, and this one absolutely is, something has to go wrong. A hitch in timing somewhere along the way, a slip-up in timing, a brief bit of conversation overheard by someone who shouldn’t have been there. The audience, expecting exactly this, even while watching events take place like clockwork, even if improvised when need be, only needs to sit back and wait. Second halves of heist films are always the best.

   And the combination of Michael Caine (movie), Noël Coward (stage), and Benny Hill (TV star) may seem to have pulled out of a hat at random, but each in their own way were at the top of their artistic fields at the time, and they’re the glue at the core that holds the film together (some more than others).

   Once the heist gets underway in earnest, some of the storylines get dropped completely. Michael Caine’s girl friend for one, and the Mafia, surprisingly, for another. What I think I’ll do, though, is stop here, rather than analyze the movie any longer (many others have) and amuse you with some photos I took along the way. And by the way, I loved the last line of dialogue: “Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.”

SNOW TRAIL. Toho Company, Japan, 1947. Original title: Ginrei no hate. Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Kosugi. Director: Senkichi Taniguchi. Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

   Fairly early on in Snow Trail, the viewer learns that there are three escaped bank robbers and that they’re hiding out somewhere in remote, cold mountainous terrain. Enter what appears to be an urban police detective who is working with local authorities to apprehend the men.

   And then the movie shifts to a resort where two employees, who heard on the radio that one of the fugitives is missing several fingers, are seen scheming as to how they can get one of the resort’s guests to remove the glove he wears all the time.

   At this point, it’s not clear whether the movie is going to be a police procedural, a film noir, or something else entirely. Indeed, it takes about another thirty or forty minutes for the central story of the movie to come into its own and by that time, you’re hooked.

   After one of the three fugitives purportedly dies, the remaining two men must struggle to survive amidst the cold, desolate landscape. Luckily for them, they find shelter in a mountain cabin inhabited by an old man, his granddaughter, and a mountaineer who is literally weathering an oncoming storm with them.

   It’s then when the two men, portrayed by Japanese film legends Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune, begin to clash. The older of the two criminals, Nojiro (Shimura) becomes wistful and introspective. Although it’s never made absolutely explicit, one senses that he is beginning to have deep, painful regrets about his life choices.

   Eijima (Mifune), on the other hand, grows more cold, more divorced from humanity, and increasingly willing to utilize violence. There’s a chillingly effective scene in which Ejima barks at his erstwhile colleague for merely enjoying listening to music. He’s the character who has gone spiraling downward into darkness.

   In many ways, Snow Trail has all the hallmarks of film noir and was clearly influenced by American crime films. But it’s also an existentialist work and a redemption story. The movie is fundamentally about one man, alone against a giant landscape of mountains and sky, who realizes too late that he has fundamentally wasted his life on crime rather than on family and connection to nature.

   Compared to Japanese crime films of the 1960s and 1970s, this little-known film may not be particularly compelling cinematically. But it’s a solidly constructed work of Japanese postwar cinema that deserves a look.

BEST LAID PLANS. 20th Century Fox, 1999. Alessandro Nivola, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin. Writer: Ted Griffin. Director: Mike Barker. Available on DVD and currently streaming on HBO/HBO Max.

   For the first hour or so, I thought Best Laid Plans was a rather derivative, but watchable and hip Quentin Tarantino-inspired crime film. Then I started to get much more into the movie, which isn’t that difficult considering the three talented actors whose characters made up the core love triangle in the film. And finally, I ended up frustrated and disillusioned, realizing that (SPOILER ALERT) the entire movie wasn’t simply a deconstruction of film noir tropes, but rather a gimmick. And the simple truth about gimmick movies is this. Once you’ve seen it, you have no desire to ever watch it again.

   Such it is with Best Laid Plans. What becomes a juicy 90s thriller turns into a farce. On paper, it probably sounded good. A small-town loser named Nick (Alessandro Nivola) enlists his girlfriend Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) into an ill-fated scheme in which she will seduce his college buddy Bryce (Josh Brolin). The plan is to falsely accuse Bryce of rape so that the scheming young couple can steal from Bryce. But it all goes horribly wrong. Such is the way in the world of neon-soaked small town desert noir. There are some admittedly good moments in here and Brolin, in particular, disappears into his character.

   That said, it all comes apart in a big way in the last ten minutes. Everything you think you saw was a lie. No, it wasn’t all a dream (another cheap way to ruin a plot). But it’s pretty darn close. Close enough that it doesn’t surprise me that the film apparently did poorly at the box office. It’s a real shame, because the film had a lot going for it. That exceptional cast in particular.
   

LUCKY JORDAN. Paramount Pictures, 1942.Alan Ladd, Helen Walker, Sheldon Leonard, Helen Page, Lloyd Corrigan, John Wengraf, Miles Mander. Screenplay by Darrell Ware, Karl Tunberg, Story by Charles Leonard. Directed by Frank Tuttle. Currently available on YouTube.

   Flag waving gangster epic on a familiar note. Ladd is tough slick New York gangster Lucky Jordan who has just survived a murder attempt orchestrated by his partner Slip Moran (Sheldon Leonard) when he gets the bad news his shyster lawyer Ernest Higgins (Lloyd Corrigan) can’t keep him out of the Draft.

   Ladd tries getting Annie (Helen Page) to pose as his needy mother, but when that doesn’t work, he is in the army and not handling it too well. Still he manages to meet beautiful WAC Jill Evans (Helen Walker) before getting thrown into the brig.

   Lucky isn’t going to take that lying down and slugs a guard and escapes, managing to steal a car and kidnap Jill along the way. Despite that, the two, as is always the way when a good girl is kidnapped by a gangster in Hollywood’s Fairy Tale world, they fall for each other.

   Once on the outside, he goes after his partner Slip, who he knows is moving in on his business and when they clash, he beats up Slip, who he discovers has secret papers he is selling to Nazi Spies.

   Helen begs him to return the papers and become a hero, but Lucky see dollar bills to fund him in his life as a deserter.

   When he goes to sell the papers back to Slip, Annie stops him warning him she saw Slip setting up an ambush. Lucky hides out with Annie, stores the papers in her place, and begins to warm to the old dame.

   When he returns from arranging another meeting with Slip he finds he was followed home earlier and the thugs have worked over Annie. Lucky, not being too bright right then, gets slugged and the Nazi’s get the papers.

   Don’t ask why they don’t kill him or the old woman. Maybe they are sentimental thugs.

   But Lucky’s two-timing secretary Mabel (Marie McDonald), knows one thing, the name of a flower, a rare tulip Slip talked about delivering. Lucky tracks down tulips and finds an estate up in Far Rockaway that has tours of its flower gardens. Along the way Jill has seen him and follows him.

   And yup, it’s the Nazi hideout owned by Miles Mander, where John Wengraf has been dealing with Slip.

   Slip arrives with the papers, but when he meets Mander in the greenhouse Lucky turns the water works on them and drops in through the glass ceiling to snatch the papers. There is some agile stunt work here, a little of it done clearly by Ladd, though not all.

   But now he can’t escape the estate, and Jill, thinking Mander is working with the FBI (she is perfect for Lucky, not too bright herself) is unknown to her a prisoner, and when Lucky gets rid of the papers will the citizen he planted them on call the FBI, and can he stall Wengraf and Mander long enough for the FBI to get there?

   No Spoilers, but if you have any doubt, you don’t know Hollywood.

   Though it is hardly in a class with Sam Fuller’s classic on the theme Pick Up on South Street or Mr. Lucky or as funny as All Through the Night, it is a fairly smart little film with a charismatic performance by Ladd as the usual tough guy with a heart, though to give him credit, his Lucky is far less sentimental than the same roles played by Lloyd Nolan and others in the same period. Even the ending hits a comically sour note.

   Lucky Jordan is nothing new, nothing special, but it is well acted and written all around, and I confess I’m still a sucker for those Patriotic speeches given by tough guys who find out just how much fun it is to punch a Nazi in the face.

   It’s an entire genre of Hollywood films with the good bad guy deciding he is more good than bad when it comes to flag waving and some of his former partners deciding they only see dollar signs.

   Ironically it works in so many movies, and here it has Ladd at his most attractive, full of quiet menace, easy physicality, and a hint of something wounded behind his eyes. Walker is beautiful and smart, Leonard always good, Mander and Wengraf make for fine villainy, and the Damon Runyonesque Lady for a Day business between Ladd and Page is satisfying without getting cloying.

   This is hardly up to the classic that Ladd and director Stuart Heisler put together in The Glass Key, but then there is no Veronica Lake or William Bendix, and at times this one is just a little rushed and half-hearted, an A film that is at heart a B with a little attitude.

FLAXY MARTIN. Warner Brothers, 1949. Virginia Mayo, Zachary Scott, Dorothy Malone, Tom D’Andrea, Helen Westcott, Douglas Kennedy, Elisha Cook Jr., Douglas Fowley. Monte Blue. Director: Richard L. Bare.

   Speaking of Douglass Fowley, he plays a snide cop with an exaggerated opinion of his own brains in Flaxy Martin, one of those great Warner’s B’s like they just don’t do no more. Zachary Scott is an underworld lawyer who wants to quit working for gangster Tom D’Andrea, but can’t tear himself loose from chanteuse Virginia Mayo, who — unbeknownst to Scott — has a business/pleasure relationship with D’Andrea herself, and is being well-rewarded for keeping him on the string.

   Tom D’Andrea [later best known for playing Chester A. Riley’s close buddy on TV] does a fine job as a virile, half-sharp gangster, kind of in the nasty-Ronald-Reagan mode, and stands up quite nicely against noir archetypes Scott and Elisha Cook Jr., who is a bit scarier than usual here as a sawed-off wanna-be who keeps calling Scott “Shamus” – shouldn’t it be Mouthpiece?

   Director Richard Bare is best remembered for his work on 77 Sunset Strip, but he does a workmanlike job here, making the most of bits like Scott being stalked through the streets by Cook Jr., a roof-top fist-fight, and a really memorable scene of our hero leaping from a speeding train and plummeting down a ravine.

   Anyway, the story offers no surprises whatever, and the characters seem motivated by nothing so much as a need to move the plot along, but there’s enough old-fashioned Style here, backed up by a syrupy echt-40s Musical score, to make it lotsa fun.

DUFFY. (Columbia Pictures, 1968. James Coburn, James Mason, James Fox, Susannah York, John Alderton. Screenplay: Donald Cammell and Harry Joe Brown Jr., both of whom are credited with the story along with Pierre La Salle. Directed by Robert Parrish.

   Nothing ages worse than old hipster unless it is old hipster comedy, dripping with pretension as only hipsters could drip pretension, and imagining mostly overage pre-hippy/Eurotrash types planning a big caper.

   Luckily for everyone involved this one has James Coburn and Susannah York (“I may be a hooker, but I am absolutely not a slut.”) to deliver actual cool and real sensuality to what would be without them as painful to watch as John Alderton’s rather thick English twit performance here.

   Coburn is Duffy, a former con man and smuggler recruited by half brothers Stefane and Antony (James Fox and John Alderton) and Stefane’s girl Segolene’s (York) plot to play pirate robbing the ship the Osiris out of Tangiers carrying a fortune belonging to their cynical and cruel father J. C. Calvert (James Mason).

   It would help if Mason’s character was at least nasty. As is his greatest sin seems to be rightly thinking his sons are useless and a dunce, and he isn’t far off.

   And I would point out that since this is an English film with English characters it would help if the characters weren’t given silly names like Stefane, Antony, and Segolene with no explanation.

   The boys remember Duffy who was a mate on their father’s yacht when Stefane and Segolene come up with the idea and convince the retired crook to go into the caper with them despite his reservations. While they stay in Tangier at Duffy’s place (decorated in porn chic for lack of any other description to fit the absolutely tasteless decor), York and Duffy become involved as the time for the shipment grows closer and their plans go into effect.

   Among the better things about this are the location shooting and gorgeous cinematography, if only someone had told Cammell and Brown (whose career is as spotty as Cammell’s) they weren’t actually the least bit hip, and Parrish had not let himself be convinced they were this might have been a pretty good caper film, but as it is the heist itself is anti-climactic and boring.

   As it stands everyone is too old and stuck with terrible dialogue:

      â€œI hope Stefane is okay. I hope Stephane hopes I’m okay.”

      â€œIt has occurred to me I’m getting used to you finally, and I probably love you in the worst possible way, I guess.”

   It’s no “We’ll always have Paris.”

   Cammell did somewhat better with his own film Performance (still pretentious, but interesting) and Demon Seed (which he hated and tried to make into a comedy), but basically this film is as problematic as his career. Even Coburn stumbles over some of the dialogue that sounds as if it was written as a Mad Magazine parody of Jack Kerouac.

   But Coburn can’t help but be Coburn and even here is ultra cool, while York is incredibly sexy despite it all, those icy eyes fascinating, though she and Coburn both scored better in the altogether more satisfying Sky Riders.

   James Mason is James Mason no matter what he is in, and that is always a bonus.

   There is a twist if you make it that long, but it really isn’t enough to lift this above the level of interesting. And honestly, if you didn’t guess the twist from the start, you weren’t paying attention.

   But I will give it that the end and Coburn being Coburn plus Lou Rawls singing “I’m Satisfied” end it better than the rest of the movie deserves.

   Arguably this might have been better seen in a theater in 1968 when I was 18, but I don’t think so. I didn’t take drugs then either, and only that could help this.

   What a huge waste of talent and beautiful scenery.

RED EYE. DreamWorks, 2005. Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jayma Mays. Director: Wes Craven.

   This is first and foremost a Wes Craven movie. It’s beautifully photographed, the shots are well taken, the music is well-chosen and perfectly timed, and he’ll almost have you believing the story, too.

   Which has to do with a gang of terrorists forcing a young female hotel manager to make sure their target in is the right room at the right time. I hate to tell you more about the story than I knew when I started watching the movie, but suffice it to say that she is on an overnight flight back to town, and their means of coercion has to do with her father. Watch the clip below:

   Cillian Murphy is the coercive factor, charming at first when the two meet “accidentally” at the airport, but turning into the evil twin brother of Illya Kuryakin, once they are on the plane, in the air, and he in the seat next to her.

   She’s trapped in the air with him. Once he tells her what he needs to have her do, what can she do? Enough to fill 60 minutes of flight time, more or less, he the cat, she the mouse. But she’s resourceful to just barely keep the PG rating for this movie.

   Once off the plane, the action is nearly non-stop, leaving the viewer little time to wonder about small little details, not until the movie’s over. If you had as much fun as I did along the way, you may not care. Otherwise all bets are off.

BOILING POINT. Warner Brothers, 1993. Wesley Snipes, Dennis Hopper, Lolita Davidovich, Viggo Mortensen, Seymour Cassel, Jonathan Banks, Dan Hedaya. Screenplay: James B. Harris, based on the novel Money Men by Gerald Petievich. Director: James B. Harris. Currently streaming on Starz & Amazon Prime.

   The first thing you should know about Boiling Point is that it was written and directed by veteran Hollywood producer James B. Harris, who is still perhaps best known in some circles for producing Stanley Kubrick’s iconic noir film The Killing (1956). I say that’s the first thing you should know because, in many ways, Boiling Point is a 1950s film noir embellished in bright neon 1990s colors. It’s got a lean screenplay, a coterie of great character actors, a seedy Hollywood setting, and a plot that features a cop and a criminal both involved with the same call girl.

   Based on the book Money Men by Gerald Petievich (whose novel To Live and Die in L.A. was brought to the big screen by William Friedkin), the film stars Wesley Snipes as Jimmy Mercer, a tired and jaded Secret Service Agent obsessed with tracking down the man who killed one of his colleagues. Snipes is an actor that I like very much, but his performance here is neither exceptional nor mediocre. It’s just solid. Nothing more, nothing less. Dan Hedaya, one of the most familiar faces for those immersed in 1990s film and television, portrays Mercer’s partner. He’s good here. As he always is.

   The real star of the movie is Dennis Hopper who really sinks his teeth into the role. He portrays Red Diamond, a perpetual loser and down on his luck criminal always developing his next scheme. Released from prison and in debt to a mafia sort, Diamond teams up with the amoral enforcer Ronnie (Viggo Mortensen) to get into the “paper” (counterfeit dollars) game. There’s a bunch of subplots, all involving various criminal sorts. These include the old timer Virgil Leach (played to the hilt by Seymour Cassell); crooked lawyer Max Waxman (a perfectly cast Jonathan Banks); and a bag man (Paul Gleason) who conducts his dirty deals in a parking lot. Diamond, who has a special fondness for big band music, also begins an affair of sorts call girl Vikki Dunbar (Lolita Davidovich).

   As it turns out, Jimmy Mercer – now estranged from his wife – is in love with Vikki. Unfortunately, the woman that ties these two men together is not a well-developed character. In addition, the film never really explores this ill-fated love triangle aside from showing us that it exists. Part of this, I suppose, is due to the relative short running time (92 minutes).

   I don’t know that there’s too much more than I can say about this film other than that it exudes atmosphere and never condescends to the audience. It’s a solid crime film. One that, with a few changes here and there, could just have easily been a moderately successful 82 minute black and white Columbia Pictures film from the 1950s.

THE STRANGERS IN 7A. Made for TV film. CBS, 14 November 1972. Running time: 74 minutes. Cast: Andy Griffith (Artie Sawyer), Ida Lupino (Iris Sawyer), Michael Brandon (Billy), James A. Watson, Jr. (Riff), Tim McIntire (Virgil), Susanne Benton (Claudine; billed as Susanne Hildur), Connie Sawyer (Mrs. Layton), Virginia Vincent (woman in bank). Writers: Eric Roth, based on the novel by Fielden Farrington. Music: Morton Stevens. Producers: Mark Carliner Productions and Palomar Pictures International. Director: Paul Wendkos.

   Artie Sawyer is the superintendent of an apartment house. The marriage between him and his wife Iris has taken a downturn, so when she leaves town to visit her sister, Artie moseys down to the local bar to “relax.” It isn’t long, however, before his relaxed mood is dissipated when he encounters Claudine, a pretty young thing who uses every available (and some not readily available) feminine wile to coax Artie into letting her spend the night in one of his apartments — at which she is predictably successful, since it’s plainly obvious what’s on Artie’s mind.

   It’s while she and Arnie are experiencing a really close encounter with each other that three men (with, we soon learn, brief cases containing sawed-off shotguns and something even more explosive) barge in and spoil the mood; the only thing these three have on their minds is that $800,000 in the vault of the bank that just happens to be next door to Artie’s apartment house . . .

   And that’s the first third of this movie, which takes its time to get moving. Like John Payne and Dick Powell before him, Andy Griffith must have been anxious to change his well-established small-town persona to something a little more adult and cashable; this one succeeds in doing that by having Griffith’s character engage in an extra-marital affair — although, to be clear, there isn’t enough time for it to go anywhere. Griffith would later do a few more made for TV films like this one before landing the plum role of Matlock.

   The most impressive cast member isn’t Ida Lupino, ordinarily a splendid actress and director, who surprisingly doesn’t have much to do here. The standout is Michael Brandon, who almost steals the show as the passive-aggressive ring leader; what happens to his character is fitting but comes off as anticlimactic considering what has gone before.

   All in all, The Strangers in 7A is a fairly standard but efficient low budget caper movie; no plot surprises, of course, but well acted and definitely not a waste of time. It’s available on video from Synergy Entertainment and, for now, YouTube’s Cult Cinema Classics channel.