Author: pparcellin@gmail.com
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A cunning serial killer is on the loose and police are baffled
Bodies are popping up with terrifying regularity in a small South Korean city and the local police force has few clues to go on. Young women are being raped and strangled, their bodies abandoned in little traveled spots, and public hysteria is growing. It’s the late 1980s and Korea has not yet emerged from authoritarian…
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‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’: A Tinseltown Allegory that Ends Unhappily Ever After
Michael Sarrazin, Jane Fonda, ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ Harrowing Tale of Dance Marathons and the Depression-Era Downtrodden. But Those Marathons Remind Us of Something Else — the Studio System at its Most Heartless Contains spoilers By Paul Parcellin “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” is a noir tragedy about exploitation of the desperate and beleaguered…
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Mark Stevens: his quartet of searing films noir still light up screens today
Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, ‘The Dark Corner’ (1946). By Paul Parcellin Mark Stevens made a string of taut crime dramas in the 1940s and ’50s that still resonate today. He acted in dozens of films, from westerns, war pictures to musicals and comedies, and directed two of his self-produced noirs as well as some hardboiled…
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Two Super-Charged Road Movies Take the Not So Scenic Route Through America
Barry Newman as Kowalski, ‘Vanishing Point’ (1971).A high-speed chase through the desert turns him into an overnight folk hero. “Vanishing Point” (1971) The hyperkinetic, blind radio disc jockey Super Soul (Cleavon Little) is a lot like an evangelical preacher without the fire and brimstone. He’s part guardian angel, part voice of God to renegade automobile…
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Imposter noir: 51 films about swapping, losing and faking identities
Olivia de Havilland, ‘The Dark Mirror’ (1946). “There is only one plot – things are not what they seem.” — Jim Thompson Let’s say you’re a character in a film noir. It’s likely that someone who you’re rubbing elbows with is not who they say they are. For that matter, you may not be who…
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‘Pale Flower’: Gambling dens, yakuza and a mysterious woman who lives on the edge
“Pale Flower” It’s clear from the start that Masahiro Shinoda’s “Pale Flower” isn’t your typical yakuza picture — the kind that’s simmered in the Japanese underworld’s intricate codes of conduct, with a lead character who agonizes over prickly themes such as honor and loyalty. “Pale Flower” covers the same slice of society as other yakuza…
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‘The Killers’: A much loved noir that’s the spitting image of another American classic
“The Killers” (1946) Some say “The Killers” is the “Citizen Kane” of noir, but how can that be? One is a beloved noir, the story behind a brutal murder of a washed up prizefighter. The other, a fictional biography of a media tycoon, loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. It’s like comparing…
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Off the Hook: A bedridden heiress glimpses the face of doom in ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’
‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ (1948) Barbara Stanwyck plays Leona Stevenson, a woman markedly dissimilar to Stanwyck’s cold blooded Phyllis Dietrichson of “Double Indemnity” four years before. Leona is no femme fatale — she’s a femme in jeopardy. That alone ought to make us feel sympathy for her, but she’s a hard one to warm up to.…
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‘Out of the Past’: 13 Signs that Jane Greer will Destroy You
‘Out of the Past’ (1947) You can’t say that Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) had no way of knowing what he was in for. A shamus ought to be able to see things that a civilian would miss, even when he’s dazzled by the gorgeous and perfidious Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). How inevitable was it that…
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The Big Knockoff: 14 Films With Armored Car Heists
If the movies are any indication, the 1940s and ’50s, especially the ’50s, must have been the golden age of armored car robberies — they were getting knocked over like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery. A common armored car robbery movie plot: Ex-con, recently paroled, finds a crummy job. Meets a girl. Wants…