Author: Keith Humphreys

Categories
Comedy Drama

Dolemite is My Name

Stand up comedy requires a performer to walk out on stage alone, usually with no props or sets, to try to slay an audience. If you can survive that brutal Darwinian process, you can probably become a film actor, which is simply much easier work. Of the many careers that illustrate that principle, Eddie Murphy’s is one of the most vivid. Elsewhere on this site, I have made the case that he deserved a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his Peter Sellers-esque multi-character performance in the comedy Bowfinger. He shows even more range and talent in the 2019 biopic Dolemite is My Name.

The film is based — apparently pretty accurately — on the colorful life of Rudy Ray Moore, whom Murphy skillfully brings to life. Raised in poverty by a man who called him worthless, Moore is desperate to prove that verdict incorrect before the whole world. His anemic music and comedy career takes off when he begins to role play in his nightclub act as “Dolemite”, who dresses like a pimp., recites obscene rhyming lyrical jokes before hip-hop was cool, and records party albums that sell well with Black audiences. This still isn’t enough success for Moore, so he gambles everything he has on making an ultra-low budget blaxploitation movie starring — who else? — himself.

There are many great comic moments here, provided by Murphy as well as other performers who know how to draw a laugh, including Keegan Michael-Kay of Key and Peele fame, who plays a more intellectual co-movie scripter who initially wants to make a serious, elevated movie about “the Black experience” but gets drawn against his better judgement into Moore’s more playful and low brow aesthetic. Wesley Snipes is also fun as a drug and alcohol-addled minor blaxploitation star who agrees to direct while openly having no faith in the project or the people in it (this actually happened on the set).

But it’s not just a comedy. Murphy makes you really care about Moore and root for him. When he finally gets his very imperfect movie into a single theater for a make or break, four wall showing, and looks outside to see if anyone has turned up to watch it, I literally held my breath hoping for his success and watching his face to learn if this was his moment or a crushing defeat. Other dramatic punch comes from the friendship between Murphy’s Moore and Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s character, two people whom no one has ever believed in so they believe in each other.

This is also an entertaining movie for people who love movies. As the characters scratch for pennies to make their film in a condemned hotel with no power or water (again, this really happened) their resourcefulness and faith in themselves recalls Robert Rodriguez brilliant book about outsider film making, Rebel Without a Crew. The film also conveys the sensibility of blaxploitation, a genre for which as I described in my review of Across 110th Street, I have some sympathy, including how it was always at some level a self-aware parody of Black stereotypes.

Also to love: The way the movie brings alive the world of the 1970s urban America. This definitely includes Ruth E Carter’s award -winning costume design

In all, this is a superb movie as comedy, drama, and biopic, with a tour de force performance by the multi-talented superstar Eddie Murphy. In addition to making us laugh, Dolemite is My Name reminds us that for every man who achieves great things because his father told him he could, there’s one who achieves great things because his father told him he couldn’t.

p.s. Look fast for Snoop Dogg, paying tribute to the “Godfather of Rap”, Rudy Ray Moore.

Categories
Horror/Suspense

The Whisperer in Darkness

Sometimes fans scrape some pennies together to make a movie based on their favorite novel, comic, television show, fictional character or film, usually starring amateur actors who simply love the material. Having been involved in some independent, very low budget projects myself, I admire the passion and resourcefulness behind such efforts. But I have never recommended one here because most of them are simply not very good. I am happy to highlight an exception to that rule, namely a fan-made movie that is arguably the best of the many efforts that have been made to adapt the works of H.P. Lovecraft to the screen: Sean Branner’s 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness.

As you would expect for a movie distributed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, the plot follows very closely their hero’s source material of the same name (good audiobook here), echoing many details perfectly as well as generously quoting passages from the text. But to the great credit of director Branney and his co-scripter Andrew Leman, the filmmakers improved on the original by giving the film an exciting third act which creates a more satisfying wrap up than does the novella.

The story opens after torrential rains have caused flooding in the streams that gush from the uninhabited (???) mountains of rural Vermont, bringing scattered reports of locals seeing the corpses of huge, crab-creatures in the swollen waterways. A skeptical academic at (where else?) Miskatonic University, Professor Albert Wilmarth (Matt Foyer), notes that similar stories have been told even back before the European immigration to the region. Wilmarth sees these parallels as a sign of humanity’s persistent tendency to imagine things and ends up debating other professors who conclude that something Lovecraftian is really going on. He is stimulated to investigate by a visit from young George Akeley (Joe Sofranko) who says that his father owns a farm that is being menaced by mysterious creatures, for which he presents enough proof for Wilmarth to go investigate, leading him to bizarre perils that could drive a man insane.

Knowing the budgetary limitations, I was prepared to be merciful to this labor of love, but it doesn’t need much mercy: None of the performances are bad and the most critical roles are very well-performed by Foyer (who has a face that was made for this kind of material) and by Autumn Wendel as a little girl in danger with whom he forms a bond. The movie is shot in something the makers called “Mythoscope” which is their effort to combine modern techniques with the look of 1930s classic horror movies. I don’t think the result actually is very visually reminiscent of those old films, but it looks fine nonetheless. Last, I expected weak special effects and was again surprised by what they achieved on a shoestring, especially in the third act.

Bravo to every Lovecraft fanatic who worked on this project. I hope some Hollywood producer is wise enough to give them a real budget to make another movie based on their idol’s strange, creative, and compelling works of fiction (OR ARE THEY?!?).

Categories
Action/Adventure Drama Mystery/Noir

Violent Saturday

Even being a film buff who has spent thousands of hours at the cinema, there remain many high-quality movies I have never seen. But it’s a rare treat to find an excellent film of which I had not even heard. I was so blessed recently when I took a flier on Violent Saturday which is currently (July 18, 2026) carried on the Criterion Channel: .

This 1955 Fox studios production initially gives viewers the impression that it’s going to be a caper film, as three hard men arrive in a small Arizona town with a lightly protected bank. But the film then swerves very successfully into Picnic territory to explore the ugliness, imperfections and struggles that lie beneath small town America’s storybook image.

The plot knits the stories of multiple characters together. Shelley Martin (Victor Mature) manages the local copper mine as he copes with his son’s shame that his father’s service in the war was stateside and out of danger. Meanwhile, the mine’s wealthy owner, Boyd Fairchild, (Richard Egan) dives into a lake of alcohol to cope with his wife Emily’s (Margaret Fairchild) philandering, even as he himself is pursued by local nurse Linda Sherman (Virginia Leith), who “moves like a Swiss watch”. Linda in turn is the object of obsession for mousy bank manager Harry Reeves (Tommy Noonan) who has taken to peeping in her windows at night.

As the small town residents’ melodrama unfolds, we also get to know the personality and quirks of the robbers. Lee Marvin plays Dill, who overtly is mean as a snake but we learn through small talk has trouble sleeping and wonders why his marriage went south. Stephen McNally is Harper, the organizer who at times seems almost fatherly to his accomplices. And the great character actor J. Carrol Naish, who I also praised in my recommendation of Sahara, does it again as Chapman, the quirky, philosophical “uncle of the family”. The film humanizes them, but also makes clear they are capable of absolutely ruthless violence. This may sound a bit like a story structure you would see in a Quentin Tarantino movie (e.g., Reservoir Dogs), and indeed Tarantino cites Violent Saturday as a major influence on his work. Not incidentally, the famous, self-important New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther hated the very elements of the film that captivated Tarantino, showing again that Crowther was a reliably inaccurate judge of where American movies were going.

This film helped secure director Richard Fleischer his first long-term movie contract. I admire his storytelling skill and camera placement (credit also to cinematographer Charles Clarke and Cinemascope for a great-looking film). He artfully manages the many moods of the story, from the painful collapse of a marriage to a father looking for respect from his son to the tense and exciting action sequences in the latter half of the movie. He draws credible performances out of his ensemble cast (with the sole exception of Ernest Borgnine, who seemed miscast as an Amish paterfamilias). Fleischer remains underappreciated today so I have tried to give him his due on this site including recommending his budget noir classic The Narrow Margin as well as the grand steampunk Disney adventure 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Violent Saturday is another jewel in Fleischer’s crown.

p.s. Given her standout performance as an alluring, caring, love starved woman here, why didn’t Virginia Leith become a big star? She got excellent reviews but her contract was soon cancelled by the studio. I’m not sure why, but her obituary suggests she was a volatile handful. To the extent she is remembered at all, it’s usually for a later zero-budget awful horror film with a cult following called The Brain That Wouldn’t Die in which her head was literally on a platter.

Categories
British Drama Mystery/Noir

Dandelion Dead

One of the delights of the streaming age is that competition between channels sometimes leads one of them to offer little-known or forgotten gems. Case in point: Tubi is currently carrying a Bafta-winning ITV mini-series of which you have probably never heard unless you were living in Britain when it was broadcast in 1994: Dandelion Dead.

Based on a sensational 1922 murder case, the plot centers on Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong (Michael Kitchen), a weak, bibulous, failing solicitor living on the Welsh-English border. Despite the meagerness of his income from legal practice, he and his three children live a respectable and comfortable life due to the inherited wealth of his wife Catherine (Sara Miles). Unfortunately, she is a harridan and the marriage is virtually barren of love, though the perfectly mannered Major works hard to maintain civility at home and a proper front in public, even when his wife goes out of her way to humiliate him. Meanwhile his professional life is increasingly beleaguered by his inability to close the a sale of an estate controlled by a drunken, wealthy client (Robert Stephens) and the arrival in town of a young, smart, professional rival (David Thewlis). If there were only some way he could make his problems disappear….

Screenwriter Michael Chaplin did a brilliant job going beyond the historical facts of the case to develop the early relationship of Herbert and Catherine (which humanizes both of them) as well as the lives of their children, especially the eldest daughter Eleanor (very well played by young Chloe Tucker). He also managed to inject some black humor, while not shying away from the ice cold aspects of the story.

Michael Kitchen is in top form here. When given a script, most actors ask for more lines. Kitchen is known for asking for fewer so that he can rely on his extraordinary gift for portraying thoughts and emotions non-verbally. When he first thinks of poisoning his wife, he steps outside and overhears through a window his children talking. As the camera rests on his face, it’s absolutely riveting to watch each twist of his lip, furrowing of the brow, wince of his face and wonder what he is thinking and what he is going to do.

The rest of the cast sparkle too, including Miles, who makes Catherine more than a termagant, which is essential to explain why Herbert still finds something in her to love. Lesley Sharp is delightful too, as a local woman who woos Thewlis’ character while making him believe he’s wooing her.

Almost incredibly, the director of this handsomely produced story of upper-middle class angst is Mike Hodges, who also directed the gritty, brutal gangster classic Get Carter (My recommendation here). Throw in that he also helmed the campy science fiction cult favorite Flash Gordon, the strange but delightful comedy thriller Pulp, and multiple admired British television documentaries, and you have the variegated career of a man who could do anything in cinema, was always desperate to work, or some combination thereof (Good late-life interview about his career by the BFI here). Regardless, this mini-series is another feather in his cap.

Categories
British Drama

Parade’s End

Many movies have attempted to tell sweeping narratives about historical and cultural change combined with an intimate love story to which the audience can more easily relate. Most of such ambitious films fail because they are attempting something very difficult, but when they get everything right, like, say, Dr. Zhivago, we remember them forever. That’s how I feel about the 2012 mini-series Parade’s End.

Based on a tetralogy of novels by Ford Maddox Ford, the story was adapted for television by the estimable Sir Tom Stoppard. The protagonist is a well-born, brilliant, kind, and rigid Englishman named Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch) who is firmly committed to the fading morality of the Edwardian Period. Unfortunately for him, the story’s antagonist is his wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall), a vain, selfish and impulsive woman he married to save from disgrace when she fell pregnant, even though the child is almost certainly not his own. The two circle each other in endless combat, with Sylvia at times making efforts to live up to Christopher’s values, but more often torturing him with infidelity and other indignities. Christopher meanwhile evidences superhuman tolerance which irritates Sylvia all the more. Into this stalemate comes a spirited, intelligent suffragette named Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens) who falls in love with Christopher. He shares her feelings but feels honor-bound not to act on them. Mutual heartache, trembling upper lips, and World War I ensue.

This series compels attention because it does not oversimplify its central characters. Sylvia is sometimes thought of as one of English literature’s most contemptable females, but with Stoppard’s script, Susanna White’s direction, and an exquisitely balanced performance by Hall, she is a fully rounded person. Not someone you’d likely want to spend time with, but capable of love, and longing to better herself even though she never quite gets there.

Christopher Tietjens is also agreeably complex, and beautifully played by a highly talented actor. Thematically, Christopher’s story parallels Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, a book that Ford Maddox Ford knew well. The people around Christopher repeatedly assume that he is less trustworthy, decent, public-spirited, and loving than he in fact is because they no longer accept the moral framework under which he lives. Cumberbatch movingly conveys the loneliness of doing the right thing when no one sees value in it, or even recognizes that you are doing it because you believe it is right not because you expect some advantage. But this isn’t simple-minded nostalgia or a jeremiad because it makes clear the terrible human cost of Christopher being unwilling to let go of traditional morals: Keeping an awful marriage together and preventing what would be a much happier and loving one from forming (and it is a nice touch that Sylvia appreciates this more than Christopher).

The bravura performances of the two leads are complimented by Clemens as the third point in the story’s love triangle. Many of the smaller roles are also acted exceptionally well, including Rufus Sewell as a sexually obsessed, barmy churchman and Anne-Marie Duff as his distressed and ever-scheming wife. And what is it about Rupert Everett that no matter how immoral or callous his character is, he somehow manages, like Claude Rains before him, to leave the audience charmed?

BBC and HBO also deserve credit for the production values, particularly the World War I trench combat scenes which are hard to make credible on a TV film and budget. The costumes and sets are also as expertly assembled as you would expect from BBC.

In sum, Parade’s End is a brilliantly written, acted and directed mini-series that sets a high bar for itself and clears it with room to spare. As both a grand historical narrative and a love story it’s a triumph for everyone involved and an absolute pleasure to watch

Categories
Action/Adventure Drama Mystery/Noir

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Robert Mitchum were born within a few years of each other and found great success in Hollywood in the decades immediately after World War II. They were often cast in similar roles: If you see an American movie from that period featuring a tough as nails cop or PI, a brawny cowboy slugging it out in a saloon, or a strong-jawed soldier saving his platoon or battleship, one or more of them was probably on screen. But by the end of the 1960s when they were all in late middle age, Mitchum had fewer films that would be remembered as classics (Out of the Past and Night of the Hunter being the strongest candidates) to his credit than did his contemporaries, perhaps because he never took his job that seriously (He famously noted that acting can’t be that hard given that Hollywood’s biggest star in its early days was a dog). With a few exceptions, Mitchum’s work in the 1940s-1960s was overall simply not at the level of Douglas or Lancaster (or for that matter Peck or Wayne).

But as he got old, Mitchum got more interesting. His tired eyes began to match the shambling body that carried them, his air of disinterest became more melancholy than insolent. Mitchum’s world-weary Phillip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (my recommendation here) is one of my favorite performances of the mid-1970s, and I would argue that he reached his greatest height just before that in the 1973 movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

The plot of the film closely follows the novel by George V. Higgins, who as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston knew the terrain he was describing. Under grey Beantown skies, a gang is pulling off a string of bank robberies using handguns supplied by minor league criminal Eddie Coyle (Mitchum). Coyle purchases the weapons from a better-connected gunrunner (Steven Keats) who also traffics in machine guns. Because Coyle is facing a sentencing hearing for smuggling a truckload of whiskey for his shady bartender (Peter Boyle), he is tempted to give information about the machine guns to an ATF agent (Richard Jordan) in the hopes of a lighter sentence. Coyle doesn’t want to go to prison again at his age, for his own sake and for that of his wife and kids, but he also doesn’t want to be a rat nor accept the risk of harsh punishment if the mob finds out he dropped a dime.

Director Peter Yates follows the compelling formula he established in my recommendations Robbery and Bullitt, namely one exciting scene with cars (in this case an inventive chase in a parking lot) and a lot of low-key atmosphere and acting everywhere else. Sporting a haircut and clothing that looks like it ran him a ten spot all in, Mitchum quietly commands the screen without a whiff of movie star about him. Eddie Coyle is not a particularly good man, but he some sense of duty to his friends and family, and Mitchum makes the audience care about him, defects and all, not least by portraying more vulnerability than toughness.

The supporting cast members all give excellent naturalistic performances that make a life of crime look gritty, unglamorous and even a bit tedious. Combined with ideal use of Boston locations, the movie at times takes on the tone of a docudrama about real world cops and robbers. It’s superb slice of life cinema anchored by the best work of Mitchum’s career.

p.s. This movie lost money but has become a cult favorite among film buffs. I assume Quentin Tarantino is one of them given that Steven Keats’ character is named Jackie Brown.

Categories
Documentaries and Books Mystery/Noir

The Mask of Dimitrios (plus an appreciation of Eric Ambler)

I had the recent pleasure of discovering the once-famous novels of Eric Ambler. Although many people think of writers like Graham Greene and John le Carré as the creators of English language thriller/espionage novels, those giants themselves would point to Ambler as the font from which it all flowed. His crisply-paced books employ what later became a staple of Alfred Hitchcock’s films (Ambler knew Hitch and indeed married his secretary): creating suspense by putting an ordinary person into perilous only half-understood situations swarming with secret agents and international conspiracies. His best-remembered book, 1939’s The Mask of Dimitrios (aka A Coffin for Dimitrios), is a pluperfect example. In 1944, Warner Brothers did film noir lovers a favor by turning it into a fine film of the same name.

The plot: Cornelius Lyden (Peter Lorre) is an academic turned thriller writer who while travelling in Istanbul is befriended by secret police chief Colonel Haki (Kurt Katch, more compelling than Orson Welles was playing the same character in Journey Into Fear). Haki tells Lyden the story of a Basil Zarahoff-type villain named Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott, in his debut role) that the authorities had been pursuing for years until his murdered body washed up on the beach. Lyden is intrigued by someone who might well have appeared as the bad guy in one of his books, and embarks, Citizen Kane-style to uncover the true life story of the shadowy Dimitrios. Along the way he meets the mysterious Mr. Peters (Sydney Greenstreet) who seems to know more about Dimitrios and Lyden than he is telling.

The movie in one sense lacks a big name star, but in another sense it doesn’t. Although audiences saw Lorre and Greenstreet as character actors as individuals, they could not get enough of the “Little Pete-Big Syd” double act that began when John Huston paired them in The Maltese Falcon. The Mask of Dimitrios is the mid-point of their nine movie run, and between them is a chemistry on par with a world class gin and tonic.

Screenwriter Frank Gruber should be grateful that he was paid well for easy work, because his script follows Ambler’s novel almost point for point, with a significant amount of dialogue adapted verbatim. Surely, Ambler could have done that himself. Ambler did eventually become a superb screenwriter, including of two of my most heartfelt recommendations: The Cruel Sea and A Night to Remember. But in any event, Gruber delivers here a fine, suspenseful script about human frailty and ugliness, leavened by a main character who tries mightily to do the right thing.

This movie was director Jean Negulesco’s big break, and he makes the most of it, getting strong performance from actors in parts large and small. His background as a painter shows in his keen visual sense about set dressing, camera angles, and lighting (hat tip also here to cinematographer Arthur Edeson, who had established his noir chops on The Maltese Falcon).

Many film buffs would argue that if I were going to highlight a movie based on an Ambler novel, I should have picked 1943’s Journey Intro Fear. It’s an above average movie, but I think it was strange for Welles and Cotten to throw out a script by the legendary Ben Hecht and do their own instead. Particularly, they moved away from the emotional driver of Ambler’s book, namely the main character’s repeatedly thinking he can trust someone and then having it all go pear-shaped such that he is eventually whittled down to trying desperately to save himself. Cotten and Welles did make two small improvements to Ambler’s story (SPOILER ALERT): Having the main character being witnessed by the villains being handed a gun explained how they knew to steal it from his cabin, and making the ship’s captain alcoholic helped explain better why he would not listen to reason. In terms of acting, Welles is a bit hammy, but I did love the wordless, menacing performance of Jack Moss (Welles’ agent rather than a professional actor) as one of the killers. Like many of Welles’ projects, he either didn’t or couldn’t finish Journey Into Fear himself and it was chopped up by studio editors, in this case to a badly rushed (no pun intended) 71 minutes. It’s definitely still worth a look, but if you want a film with Welles, Cotten and other Mercury theater stalwarts about a moral and somewhat naive American intoxicated by a European beauty while coping with international intrigue and ever present danger, I would recommend instead the genuinely magnificent The Third Man.

Back to Ambler. I am glad he eventually got to do some screenwriting, though disappointed his collaborations with Hitchcock were limited to an episode of the latter’s TV show. His most famous novels, including The Mask of Dimitrios and Journey Into Fear remain fresh, exciting, and full of endlessly quotable dialogue (“I am old and have the luxury of despair”). He deserves an audience today. Reading and then watching The Mask of Dimitrios — or the other way round, if you like — is an excellent way to introduce yourself to Ambler’s oeuvre.

p.s. In an effort to cash in on the huge success of Casablanca, Warner Brothers quickly and cheaply cranked out another Lorre-Greenstreet film based on the Ambler novel Uncommon Danger in 1943 (The most slavish element being an opening montage that nearly copies Casablanca’s, including having the same director and narrator). Background to Danger was undone by star George Raft, who with the boneheaded judgment for which he was famous, insisted on changing Ambler’s everyman protagonist into a tough, streetwise federal agent! The screenwriter, W.R. Burnett said he worried about running into Ambler after the movie came out. Lorre and Greenstreet are both fine as usual, but it’s a forgettable film that is a million miles from the spirit of the novel on which it is based. Would avoid.

Categories
Drama Mystery/Noir

Murder by Contract

I rarely write reviews of zillion dollar blockbusters because there is little to say that hasn’t already been said, and even fewer people who haven’t already heard it. In contrast, I exploit opportunities to highlight B-pictures of which you may not have heard, but which are very much worth seeking out (e.g., see my reviews of My Name is Julia Ross, Cash on Demand, Tarantula, Plunder Road, and The Narrow Margin). An excellent example is a low-budget 1958 film noir that was shot in just 7 days: Murder by Contract.

The story opens with a handsome, self-possessed, and intelligent man approaching a mobster and blandly asking to be hired as an assassin. Claude (Vince Edwards) has a stable job with a pension, but, he explains matter-of-factly, wants to buy a $28,000 house by the river and doesn’t want to wait 30 years to get there. After being made to wait two weeks for a call in his apartment as a test, he is hired and begins professionally and coldly carrying out contracts, recording his earnings and his progress towards homeownership in a notebook Eventually he is hired for a bigger, higher-risk contract to execute a prosecution witness who is under police protection. Flanked by two mafia minders (Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine), he lays his plans carefully, but fate and his own psychological quirks start to work against him.

You will note that isn’t a particularly complex plot, but the story is only half of what this movie offers. The other half is a character study of a philosophical loner who is at times utterly ruthless and at others considerate beyond measure. That he can turn on a dime makes Claude both beguiling and frightening. Edwards’ movie career never really went anywhere (though he later became a television star as Dr. Ben Casey) but it’s a credit to his acting and Irving Lerner’s direction that the audience can have some sympathy for him despite his psychopathic predilections.

The spare style and look of this film feel more akin to the cinema of France and Italy than the U.S.. That reflects the craft of Lerner and also cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who had no choice but to shoot on simple sets and in natural locations with no adornment. Perry Botkin’s simultaneously cool yet suspenseful score is also essential to the mood.

The script, by Ben Simcoe and an uncredited Ben Maddow, paints Claude as having the single-mindedness and female-focused psychological hang-ups of Travis Bickel from Taxi Driver, but with much better clothes and manners. I was therefore not surprised to learn that the legendary Martin Scorsese saw Murder by Contract as the second feature when he went to the theater as a 14-year old. The movie had a major impact on him, and he later hired Lerner to help make New York, New York.

I believe this suspenseful, fascinating B-movie treasure is now in the public domain, so I put it here for you to enjoy.

p.s. Herschel Bernardi, who is so good here in a half-comic, half-dtamatic role, was a stalwart on another one of my recommendations: the Peter Gunn television series.

Categories
Drama Mystery/Noir

The Harder They Fall

Humphrey Bogart has a secure place on the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood actors. I’ve recommended movies where he plays unpretentious heroes (Sahara and To Have and Have Not) and figures of genuine menace (In a Lonely Place) but like most of his fans I cherish Bogie most for his world weary, cynical idealists who haven’t quite given up hope. As morally compromised sportswriter Eddie Willis in 1956’s The Harder They Fall, Bogart ended his career by nailing such a role for us a final time.

Columbia promoted this movie as a sort of sequel to its commercial and critical 1954 mega-smash On The Waterfront based on the shared presence of Budd Schulberg’s writing, Rod Steiger’s acting, and a story about a boxer and mobsters. But the novel The Harder They Fall (adapted for the screen by Philip Yordan) was actually written by Schulberg first and the film’s subject matter is the boxing industry itself rather than a hard-luck longshoreman whose pugilistic career is behind him.

The plot is loosely based on the career of Primo Carnera, an Italian strongman who became world heavyweight boxing champion after winning a series of suspect “victories” that were fixed by the mob. In the movie, the central character is a big, clumsy Argentinian mountain of a man named Toro Moreno (Mike Lane), whose sleazy manager Nick Benko (Steiger) needs Moreno to get positive press from a trusted source like the Eddie Willis (Bogart). Eddie can see that Moreno is a lousy boxer, but he’s financially desperate enough to become corrupted by Benko. The entourage begins touring the country winning fixed fights and showering Moreno with enough misleading publicity to make him a challenger for a lucrative (for Benko) title bout.

Morally, Eddie Wilson is much farther gone than, say Rick Blaine in Casablanca. He sells out almost immediately and exploits colleagues and friends to spread lies about Moreno’s boxing prowess. Bogart brings his growing self-loathing across with furtive looks and tired movements, and that he was manfully making this film while dying of esophageal only amplifies the effect of his acting (He had to do some reshoots of scenes in which his eyes were watering from the pain of his disease). Coming from a completely different style of acting (“The method” which Bogart apparently found a bit amusing), Steiger is a superb foil for Bogart as a man who behaves just as badly but feels no compunction about doing so.

Little known Mike Lane, a former circus wrestler, brings across the central tragedy of the story: Toro Moreno really believes he’s a great boxer and that the people around him have his best interests at heart. He is a physically huge man, but psychologically his character is a naive, tender-hearted little boy. His exploitation by Benko eats at the audience’s conscience just as it does Eddie’s.

The strong performance by Lane as well as by real-life boxers Jersey Joe Walcott, Max Baer, Pat Comiskey, and Joe Greb, is a credit to the fine director Mark Robson, who made actors out of all of them. And the legendary cinematographer Burnett Guffey is in top form, contributing arresting visuals outside the ring and even moreso in it.

The Harder They Fall has as bleak of view of humanity as any of the noirish dramas of the period. It paints a world where most people are heartless and those who trust are victims. And who better to play someone caught between such amorality and decency than one of the greatest movie stars of the 20th century?

p.s. Two somewhat different endings were shot and are still in circulation, one with Eddie calling for boxing to be banned (reflecting Robson’s distaste of it) and the other with him only demanding an investigation into corruption within the sport (reflecting Schulberg’s taste for it, warts and all).

Categories
British Drama Horror/Suspense

Cash on Demand

Hammer Studios sometimes ventured out of the horror genre with impressive results, as I described in my recommendation of Taste of Fear, Another fine example, which ranks as one of the best B-movies in British history in any genre, is the suspenseful bank heist picture Cash on Demand.

Made as cheaply as chips in 1961, the story centers on small town British bank manager Harry Fordyce (Peter Cushing). Harry is tight as wax in his work, and cold and demanding towards his staff. His only evident humanity is his love for his wife and young son. When the smooth, well-dressed Colonel Gore Hepburn (André Morell) of the bank’s insurer visits to conduct a surprise security inspection just before Christmas, Harry is initially confident that his operation will pass with flying colors. But he could not be more wrong about what is to unfold, both for the bank and also for himself and his family.

Hammer benefited from the British tradition of actors taking seriously small parts in low-budget films in a way Hollywood stars often would not. Cushing digs into his role with professionalism, allowing us to care about and eventually even to feel sorry for someone who at first seems hard to take. The rest of the cast is also very good, and it’s a particular pleasure to see Richard Vernon, usually slotted into one-dimensional Establishment roles (at which he excelled, including in Goldfinger and A Hard Day’s Night), essay a character with more depth. As Fordyce’s underling Pearson, Vernon is still of course playing a respectable type, but his junior bank manager has vulnerability and dignity, particularly in his loyalty to his co-workers.

Consistent with its modest budget and origins as a TV play, the entire movie is shot in just a few rooms of the bank. But the cast and little known director Quentin Lawrence use the claustrophobia to amp up the tension as a clever and malicious plot unfolds. It’s another fine demonstration that you don’t need a hundred millions dollars to make a good movie: In the case of this superb film, it was less than 40,000 pounds.