Mixed-Feelings Watch: Man on a Tightrope (1953)

Watched:  09/23/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Elia Kazan

I'm somewhat shocked I'd never heard of this movie before.  But, that's what TCM is all about - pulling out movies from the library and saying "here you go.  This one's solid.  Folks used to know how to make a movie, huh?"  

Brought to TCM on a night in which Dana Delaney co-hosted (with Eddie Muller) a slate of films featuring screen legend Gloria Grahame, Delaney came ready to talk.  

Look - I have some mixed feelings on this one.  It's a terrific movie.  I believe in the conceit of the film, and I think Muller explained it as well as you could, so I'm in a hard-agree mode.  As much as I generally agree that Kazan is an amazing director, the guy named names during HUAC that did a lot of damage.  

So, when a movie is about the iron grip of post WWII Soviet-style governance in Czechoslovakia, and how it pushes an a-political head of a circus to consider his options...  well, I tend to agree with anyone who wasn't a fan of Stalinism or the authoritarian/ police-state governance employed in Eastern Europe.  This movie could easily spin up a TL;DR post or a full college thesis, but... I'll be merciful. 

Melodrama Watch: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Watched:  09/24/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's (so, so 1950's)

Director:  Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk was a @#$%ing mad man.  

This is one of the most bizarre looking and beautiful movies I've ever seen - like someone went to technicolor and just said "this one goes to 11".  Every shot looks like one of those super-saturated ads from a 1950's print magazine, is perfectly framed and blocked.  It's just amazing to look at. 

The story is not exactly whisper thin, and it's some very real stuff served up as a fluffy morality play.  Sirk was a guy who knew his audience - we first studied him in the "women's pictures" unit in film school.  But that audience is absolutely not just women, it just puts women front and center in their own stories.  

Jane Wyman (Ms. Falconcrest herself) plays a middle-aged widow with two grown kids (well, college-aged) who is dealing with the nonsense of East Coast bougie social life, including husbands making passes at her (not cool, husbands).  Wyman's best pal is, of course, Agnes Moorehead.  Who looks fantastic by the way.*

Ida Watch: Private Hell 36 (1954)

this movie was also released as "Baby Face Killers" which makes no sense and is hilarious

Watched:  09/23/2021

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Don Siegel

I'd see this one before, one of the films from The Filmmakers, the producing company founded by Ida Lupino and her husband at the time.  Lupino had co-written the film, and co-stars in what I find an interesting role as a down-on-her-luck lounge singer who happens to be a witness valuable to two detectives (Steve Cochrane and Howard Duff) as they seek a murderer who has fled to LA and is now passing bills known to have been stolen in a murder/ robbery.  

It's a cheaper film, so it's smaller and occasionally falls into the trap of letting scenes linger on so we can make the necessary 80 minute feature run-time.  And there's a whole scene at the beginning that seems like a favor to Steve Cochrane so he can tear apart a set and do some cool action sequence stuff (there's not a ton of action, otherwise).  

But, I do like the set-up quite a bit.  Cochrane as the morally-shakey cop, Huff as the cop with a wife (Dorothy Malone in platinum hair) and kid who wants to be the one with the straight moral compass - who are assigned to track down the mysterious NY criminals.  Along the way they meet Lupino and eventually track down the criminal - and all that cash.  

Cochrane believes he needs money if he's going to keep Lupino, and Huff... is conflicted.  If the movie has a slow mid-section, it has some great moments of punctuation.  

Anyway, it's got some pure noir baked in, and something of an accidental femme fatale.

Noir Watch: Human Desire (1954)

weird.  I used that same tag line in my wedding vows.

Watched:  09/20/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM 

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Fritz Lang

First - this episode of Noir Alley was hosted by Eddie Muller and actor Dana Delaney, and what a goddamn delight.  Delaney has a presence and intellect that fits in perfectly with the TCM vibe.  She's a total cool kid who knows her stuff.  This wasn't, as happens on TCM from time to time, some actor wandering in who kinda-sorta likes a topic or film.  She wrote articles on Gloria Grahame for this quarter's Noir City magazine - so she was more than a bit prepared.  And, as long as she's Dana Delaney, she's going to be great talking about any topic.

Human Desire (1954) has enough elements going for it that it's totally watchable, but there's a reason I haven't returned to it til now.  Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame star.  It's directed by Fritz Lang.  There's a budget behind it.  You can do worse than Broderick Crawford.  My memory of it was the last act sort of falls apart, and before the movie opened, Delaney basically explained why:  I guess they totally rewrote the last act from the book and French movie it was based upon, and for some reason give Glenn Ford's character a moral high ground he hasn't earned and Graham's character is totally thrown to the wolves despite this making no sense in the film.  

PODCAST: "Miller's Crossing" (1990) - A Signal Watch Canon Episode w/ JimD and Ryan

Watched:  09/09/2021

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown (well over 30x)

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Coen Bros.

For more ways to listen

JimD looks in his heart and joins Ryan to discuss a shared canon film. It's the third from the Coen Bros. and one that is seemingly being forgotten by the current generation of film fans. Join us as we twist and turn, up is down, black is white. We're talkin' about friendship. We're talkin' about character. We're talkin' about - hell. listeners, I ain't embarrassed to use the word - we're talkin' about ethics.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 160: "Miller's Crossing" (1990) - a Signal Watch Canon Episode w/ JimD and Ryan

Music:

Miller's Crossing Opening Titles -  by Carter Burwell

Miller's Crossing End Titles - by Carter Burwell

Signal Watch Canon:

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Roller Watch: Unholy Rollers (1972)

Watched:  09/18/2021

Format:  TCM Underground

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Vernon Zimmerman

Probably most famous for its editor of all things (a young lad name of Martin Scorsese), it's a Roger Corman movie about the rise and fall of a wayward young woman with a temper who finds stardom in the Roller Derby!

Starring Claudia Jennings - a person I'm surprised hasn't had a movie made about her life - it's a no-budget production that mostly relies on the drift in what you could show on a screen in 1972, and that meant lots of casual partial nudity.  Which was what I associated with Roger Corman when I first knew who he was as a teen, and isn't really accurate.  

The movie also has, oddly, Joe E. Tata! of 90210 fame, and Kathleen Freeman looking like she doesn't want to be there more than usual.

Look, it's a cheap and trashy movie, and that's the fun of it.  I didn't tune into Unholy Rollers (1972) because I was expecting a David Lean film.  That it shifts gears and tries to tell a story about the perils of roller derby stardom is almost weird.  But if the movie lasts long enough, I guess it's going to tell some kind of story one way or another.  I'm just not sure why they went for a downbeat ending.  

I mean, it's not Mean Streets downbeat, but it's also not a "and she skated happily ever after".

Anyway.  It does a great job of explaining and showing off roller derby, and made me miss going to bouts.

90's Super Watch: Mystery Men (1999)

Watched:  09/17/2021

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  Unknown.  More than 2, less than 6.

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Kinka Usher (his only movie)

This movie was unnecessary, but it had a lot of fun bits.  It just came out totally without context, and would make way more sense in a world with 20 superhero shows on and 5 or so mega superhero movies per year. 

It's adapted from a comic, which would have made a ton of sense in a comic shop in the late 1980's - 1990's.  After all, people in a comic shoppe have enough of a feel for comics to understand satire over the camp of the 1960's.  And it's kind of not a surprise that in a decade that saw 3 Batman movies and not much else, the idea of Too Many Superheroes and Wannabe Superheroes didn't exactly land.  

I read something that said "the film is too self-aware" and that, I think, is a big problem with it.  Everyone feels sort of like they're both aware of superhero movies, and camp superheroes, and they're doing a very long sketch about superheroes where they're kind of looking at the audience going "see?  see what I did there?"

Happy Birthday, Cassandra Peterson

As we're like to do around here, we're wishing actress, activist and savvy business-person Cassandra Peterson a happy birthday!  

You know her best as Elvira, Misteress of the Dark!  She and Shudder are teaming up for a Halloween special this year, she's got projects going in comic books, and she's got fashion lines and collectibles out there, as well as her work with fan conventions and whatnot.  

Anyway, she's got a lock on October as the spookiest of all months, so check in on what she's up to!  

Here's the announcement of the Special Special:

Bye-Bye Brooklyn 99

Sometime before COVID, Jamie was watching that comedy cop show on Hulu that I think was on Fox.  I knew about it, and found it curious that it co-starred Andre Braugher, who I'd seen in several things, but had thought was a fine dramatic actor from his Homicide: Life on the Streets days (a show I did not watch religiously, but would tune into specifically for Braugher).  I liked Andy Samberg well enough, but I was mostly not checking out Fox sitcoms at the time.  

Well, as often happens when - in pre-COVID times, when I wasn't here all the time - Jamie was watching episodes on her own.  And she'd watch them if I was around and doing other things, and I'd I listen enough that I eventually I would stopped what ever else I was doing and watch a couple of episodes.  Anyway - I was into it.  

I planned to catch up after she went to bed, starting over myself on Hulu, but she offered to re-watch the show with me from the beginning, which is always a sign it's an okay show.

Noir Watch: Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

Watched:  09/15/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Richard Quine

Before the movie, Muller pointed out that this film sure feels like the same story they use in The Killers from 1964.  If you asked me which to pick, I'd say to reach for The Killers, unless you have the option of the 1946 The Killers, which shares only some cosmetic similarities.  

But, Drive a Crooked Road (1954) was better than I figured, but still not setting the world on fire.  Starring Mickey Rooney as a lonely-hearts mechanic and would-be-race-car-driver, it hits all the beats of noir in a very small scale and is intended to give Rooney a new persona as far from Andy Hardy as possible. 

It doesn't hurt that a young Kevin McCarthy plays a bank-robber who sets up Rooney to fall for his girl, the Rita Hayworth-ish Dianne Foster, and get him wrapped up into a bank robbery as the get away wheelman.  

And, unlike most noir films, they do literally perform the action of the title and drive a crooked road to get away from a bank as we turn the corner into the third act.  

Foster is... okay.  She was clearly signed because she... looks good on film.  But she never quite knocks it out of the park in the charisma department or has that ineffable quality that would have made a really solid femme fatale role one for the ages.  She's not boring, and you get how Rooney's character can't believe how his fortunes have turned when she shows interest, but I can imagine the role in someone else's hands (Rhonda Fleming, honestly) and how much more they might have squeezed out of the part.

McCarthy and his pal played by Jack Kelly are a buyable counterpoint to Rooney's guileless driver.

What really struck me was the third act feeling like crime fiction of the era and earlier, with the quiet, doomed ending when I expected the usual Hayes-approved turn to escape and a happy life for our protagonist as his bad-girl turns good.

Nope.

Anyway, a great installment for this week's Noir Alley.