Noir fiction for the modern reader.

I just received my Blu-Ray boxed set of Mildred Pierce, the HBO miniseries from 2011 directed by Todd Haynes. Nominated for twenty-one Emmys and winner of five, it’s a powerful story of a world-weary woman striving against odds for a better life. I had seen it when it originally aired several months ago and promptly pre-ordered the Blu-Ray box, because I felt it would be one of those things I would want to watch every couple of years or so.

And I was right.

When I watched it again, it didn’t seem at all stale. Rather, I was able to pick up things I’d missed the first time around (always a sign that a movie is doing something right). My overall appreciation of it rose considerably.

Frankly, I’d been waiting for something like this for many years. The 1945 film of the same name may have won an Oscar for Joan Crawford, but it didn’t do any justice to James M Cain’s novel from which it was adapted. For Hollywood purposes, they added a murder and other such nonsense and deleted much of the class division that Cain went to great lengths to portray. The HBO version, however, replicates the novel virtually scene for scene, and it vividly paints the picture of the sharp social differences between the characters. In 1945, Hollywood tried mightily for a noir atmosphere with lots of shadowy photography, especially in the police station (didn’t those cops have lights in their offices?). HBO achieves a thick, textured noir feel through well-fleshed-out characters and their motivations. You could almost call it “chick flick noir”.

Kate Winslet turns in a major-league performance in the difficult title role. Traipsing around in dowdy dresses and aprons, she crawls inside Mildred’s skin as she bakes her pies and eventually runs her restaurants. Crawford, on the other hand, always seemed to be going through her usual motions of acting, always aware of the camera, the lighting, and so on. Winslet makes you feel voyeuristic, like you’re watching her personal life unfold by peeking through the blinds. You will completely forget she was ever in Titanic as she plows through all five Mildred Pierce episodes, trying to get above her raising, caving in to the guilt trips her social-climber daughter is constantly laying on her, and ultimately falling for the conniving Monty Beragon, played with gusto by Guy Pearce.

Beragon, polo-playing man about town, has seen his fortune wane through the depression, and he’s reduced to living in the servant’s quarters of his damp, drafty Pasadena mansion. He was portrayed by Zachary Scott in the 1945 film, and truth be told, Scott fit that character like Clark Gable fit Rhett Butler. But Scott is gone, and Pearce approaches the role from a different angle. Where Scott was oily, Pearce is far more sincere, or so he seems. A key scene in the big Pasadena house where Beragon tells Mildred the importance of rooms and the things they contain makes you believe for a moment that he’s redeemable, that he’s not quite the rat you suspected. One of the audio commentaries that accompany the Blu-Ray set tells us that Pearce’s dialogue coach helped him nail the subtle speech inflections unique to old-time natives of Los Angeles, those who, like Beragon, came from old money.

The miniseries is set from 1931-1940, like the novel, and the title notwithstanding, it is almost stolen by the story of Veda Pierce, Mildred’s daughter, played as a pre-teen by Morgan Turner and from ages 17-20 by Evan Rachel Wood. Only the strength of Winslet’s star turn keeps the story in Mildred’s court. Turner is outstanding as the bratty, self-absorbed young Veda and Wood seems like the natural older version of her. I would imagine Wood’s performance was heavily influenced by watching Turner in the rushes for her body language, her voice inflections, and most of all, her all-about-me attitude.

In a smaller role, Hope Davis scores big as Mrs Forrester, a patrician grande dame who interviews Mildred for a maid’s job in one of the early episodes. Later on, her character marries a movie director and she becomes Mrs Lenhardt. Again she meets Mildred, but under very different circumstances, and can’t quite place her. Davis makes the most of her onscreen time, giving life to a minor character and preventing her lapse into stereotype.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to mention the production design in Mildred Pierce. Authentic period detail and a palette of muted greens and grays give the miniseries a vivid look at a middle-class American family of the 1930s. Production designer Mark Friedberg, Art Director Peter Rogness, and Set Decorator Ellen Christiansen shared the 2011 Emmy for Outstanding Art Direction.

Mildred Pierce is a winner for everyone involved, though, especially the late James M Cain, who was one of the great noir authors of all time. Nobody could tell a story better.

EVERY SHALLOW CUT by Tom Piccirilli (2011)

Review by Mike Dennis

What’s the deal with Tom Piccirilli? Doesn’t he realize too much backstory is fatal to any novel? That it absolutely has to be woven in to the story, not dumped up front? Doesn’t he realize you need ample dialogue to move everything along? The reader will, you know, get awfully bored reading all that narrative. There are, after all, rigid rules all writers must follow.

Well, maybe he doesn’t realize the existence of these rules, because if he did, he might not have written Every Shallow Cut (ChiZine Publications, 2011), a shattering novella of our times.

On second thought, maybe he does know about the rules, but broke them anyway, which makes him a far better author than most people realize.

Incredibly, the entire first half of this compact book (I read the paperback in its unusually small format) is nearly all backstory, with Piccirilli pulling a reverse, deftly weaving in the actual story while he recites the grim history of his nameless central character. Dialogue is virtually absent throughout this first half as well, leaving the reader to turn the page solely on the strength of the author’s bleeding prose, as he plunges us into a hard-edged tale of a man whose life has evaporated, who has lost everything in our troubled economic times.

This character is the quintessential noir protagonist. From the first page, he’s in deep shit, largely because of his own bad choices, and it only goes downhill from there. And as with all of us when we make bad decisions, the fiddler must be paid. Yes, Piccirilli follows the noir playbook perfectly.

But somehow, Every Shallow Cut transcends noir and its conventions. It leaps up and slaps you in the face and screams at you that maybe we’re all in deep shit, and maybe our decisions have nothing to do with it. Maybe we all have a screw quietly loosening somewhere in the darkest corners of our souls which, given the right circumstances, could eventually cause all of us to become unspooled.

In addition to the central character, none of the characters has a name, and this fits the story well, because, like it or not, names carry connotations which help bring fictional characters into sharp focus. Piccirilli’s characters are meant to remain cloudy in our mind’s eye, as if seen through a window streaked over with grime. This way, they are almost interchangeable with people we might know, maybe even with ourselves. Even the cover is hard to read. This all adds up to very little distance between the reader and the characters, making the reader uncomfortable and providing a more powerful emotional wallop.

Piccirilli is an excellent author, having written over twenty novels, along with numerous short stories and novellas, and this is not the first of his books that I’ve read. It is, however, the best. I’ve wondered why he’s not better known, why his books don’t sell in such numbers as to propel him into permanent status on bestseller lists. It might be because the American reading public is not ready for the likes of Every Shallow Cut. It’s a masterpiece far ahead of its time.

Heath Lowrance, a talented author if ever there was one, has just added “man of impeccable taste” to his credentials. He took the time to read The Ghosts Of Havana and write a wonderful review of it. I could stick a slick link in here to the review, but hey, I’m a simple guy, so I’ll just post the entire review below.

When a woman is murdered at his nightclub, Robbie makes it his mission to find out who and why– he’s a bit of a shady character himself, but a feeling of responsibility drives him on. Teaming with the victim’s reporter sister, he finds himself caught up in the dark, sinister underworld of Key West, and uncovers a mind-boggling conspiracy that dates back decades. Robbie is no stranger to violence, but now it seems he may have bitten off more than he can chew…

The Ghosts Of Havana is a relentlessly fast-paced conspiracy thriller, the sort of book that keeps you reading all through the night. I devoured it in two sittings, on the edge of my seat the whole time to see what unexpected turn of events would occur next. Mike Dennis does a terrific job of revealing the seamy side of Key West, with the sort of intimate touches that only a native of that place would be capable of. And his protagonist, Robbie, moves through this dark world as if he’s right at home. 

And the secret behind the conspiracy, once it’s revealed, will blow your mind. Top-notch suspense here.

Heath has written a game-changing novel, The Bastard Hand, as well as a short story in the horror-western-noir genre, That Damned Coyote Hill. He’s also got a short story collection that’s well worth your attention called Dig Ten Graves, along with various other stories and an upcoming novel. Yes, he is productive, and I’m very pleased that he did this review of my novel while he’s on his way up, and still has the time.

Christmas again. Can you believe it? I think I just celebrated New Year’s last week! I wonder why the time flies much more rapidly as you get older. Anybody got any ideas?

Anyway, I thought I’d do a little post about my favorite Christmas movies. These films convey to me a Christmasy feeling, even though some of them don’t deal directly with the Christmas holiday. In no particular order they are:

HOLIDAY INN (1942) / Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale. Director: Mark Sandrich. Crosby-Dale-Astaire song and dance team is broken up when Astaire takes Dale away. Crosby eventually heads for Connecticut (always shown in these movies to be a rural kind of place populated with funny Hollywood types), where he opens up an inn that operates only on holidays. Irving Berlin wrote a song for each of the major holidays, including the legendary White Christmas, performed for the first time in this film. Lots of charm as Bing sings and Fred dances. As expected, Berlin’s tunes are top drawer.

YOUNG AT HEART (1954) / Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Gig Young, Ethel Barrymore. Director: Gordon Douglas. Classy remake of 1938 film, Four Daughters, in which a down-and-out piano player arrives into a warm and fuzzy home, and things are never the same. Sinatra shines as the loner with an attitude and Day warms up her cutesy persona that would permeate her films of the late 50s and early 60s. Barrymore, as Aunt Jessie, delivers many great lines.

A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983) / Peter Billingley, Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon. Director: Bob Clark. Now-classic holiday yarn set in the 1940s, told from Ralphie’s (Billingsley’s) point of view. He craves a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, but his parents are adamant: it’ll put your eye out. McGavin scores big as Ralphie’s father, the “furnace fighter”, and Dillon as the weary mother. Movie touches every Christmas nerve in your body and gets better with each viewing. Often runs as a 24-hour marathon on Christmas day.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) / James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore. Director, Frank Capra. Stewart runs a small-town building & loan company and is well-liked by everyone but Barrymore. Things turn sour for him and he’s about to commit suicide when he is saved by his guardian angel, unforgettably played by Henry Travers. What follows is a look at what his life would’ve been like if he’d never been born. Imaginative, fanciful piece of filmmaking by Capra, who was inspired to make this movie after visiting Seneca Falls, New York, the town on which the fictional “Bedford Falls” was created.

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (1946) / Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet. Director: Peter Godfrey. Stanwyck writes for Greenstreet’s magazine and has everyone fooled into thinking her Martha Stewart-type articles reflect her real lifestyle, when in fact she is completely un-domestic. Enter returning war veteran Morgan and the fun begins. Pour some hot cocoa and curl up with this film on Christmas Eve.

I’LL BE SEEING YOU (1945) / Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple. Director: William Dieterle. Wartime tale has Rogers as convict on Christmas leave from prison. She meets Cotten, a war vet who has recovered from his physical wounds but not from the mental problems he incurred during the battles. Memorable MGM drama with the stars at the top of their form. Haunting title song stays with you.

MIRACLE ON 34th STREET (1947) / Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood, Edmund Gwenn. Director: George Seaton. Gwenn is hired as a last-minute replacement Santa Claus for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, eventually becomes the store Santa for the Christmas season. Pretty soon, he’s claiming to be the real Santa Claus. Good-natured film hits all the right spots in attaining its well-deserved classic status. Film won four Oscars, including one for Gwenn in a supporting role. Lost out for Best Picture to Gentleman’s Agreement.

QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins

Review by Mike Dennis

“Clients opened a drawer, stuck in their hand, and I was the weapon they pulled out.”

That’s Quarry talking, and he’s a professional killer. Like most in his line of work, he sees things through a very tight, all-business prism. He knows the intended targets are the walking dead, slated for extinction by someone else who has paid a lot of money to get it done. So if he has a moment of queasiness or second thought, a replacement will step in and do it instead. Either way, the target goes down.

Quarry is far from one-dimensional, however, and his personality shines through in Max Allan Collins’ Quarry’s Ex, a top-notch 2011 effort for the newly-resuscitated Hard Case Crime imprint.

The year is 1980 and we find Quarry in Boot Heel, a small town in extreme southern Nevada, which is prospering from the patronage of middle-class people, most of whom sport Reagan For President buttons, and who find Las Vegas too expensive and/or too crowded. While having lunch in a casino restaurant, he has a chance encounter with Jerry, a former colleague who, after a few Scotches, starts talking shop.

Turns out Jerry is in town as part of a two-man team whose intention is to kill a movie director shooting a film on location in Boot Heel. As it happens, Quarry is stalking the other member of the team in what will eventually turn the hitman-story subgenre on its ear.

In a rare moment of introspection, Quarry reveals to the reader his reasons for entering the murder business. Due to a perfect alignment of the stars, he tells how he met the Broker years earlier, who began setting him up with good-paying hit jobs. Eventually, Quarry had to liquidate the Broker and wound up with his database of contract killers.

Sensing a big-money opportunity, he then decides to surveil these killers, one at a time, until they go out on a job. Through diligent work, he determines who their target is, and then approaches that target, telling him/her of the imminent danger. For a price, he will eliminate the killer and for a larger price, he’ll eliminate the one who hired the job to be done. Nick Varnos is one of these hitmen and Quarry has been tailing Varnos at his Las Vegas home for a month, waiting for him to go out on a job. Finally, Varnos leads him to Boot Heel.

Quarry’s Ex is the latest entry in Collins’ series about this hardass killer. By wisely filling in some of Quarry’s past, he has added a lot of texture to the character, enabling the reader to invest in him emotionally. We learn that through the years, Quarry has overcome some of his greatest struggles, not the least of which were caused by his cheating ex-wife. Years later, as his body count surges upward, he remains haunted by her and the demons she awakened within him.

Collins is the author of several successful series, as well as bearing the Mike Hammer torch passed to him by the late Mickey Spillane. I certainly hope he finds time in the future to continue this riveting series about a hired killer.

It’s too bad Zachary Scott’s movie career didn’t last longer than it did. He was tailor-made for film noir. The deceptive cheshire smile, the just-right mustache, his oily presence, his ability to portray utterly amoral characters, he had it all. Whenever you saw his name on the poster, you knew someone was going to get royally fucked. Films like Mildred Pierce (1945), Her Kind Of Man (1946), and Flamingo Road (1949) served as great showcases for his sinister-smooth screen persona.

I could’ve seen him as a film noir staple throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, then sliding into villainous character roles in middle age. Unfortunately, a serious injury resulting from a rafting accident in 1950 sent him reeling into a long, painful recovery period and heavy depression. Although he made occasional movies after that and digressed into TV, his film career never recovered.

Which is why I got excited the other night about watching Danger Signal (1945) for the first time. The synopsis said his character “murders women for their inheritance”. I could just hear the producer bellowing into his intercom, “Get me Zachary Scott!”

The film opens in classic Warner Bros style with Scott in a sleazy apartment at night, a female corpse sprawled on the bed. The landlady is pounding at the door, neighbors gather, and Scott rifles the dead woman’s purse. He grabs a fistful of cash and splits out the window. Next thing you know, he’s on a bus to California.

Soon he meets Faye Emerson and he slides right into his slick-gigolo routine that he carried over from Mildred Pierce. She falls for him and she has a younger sister played by Mona Freeman and…well, it gets a lot better from there.

I liked Danger Signal. I liked it a lot. It wasn’t nearly as predictable as it could’ve been, and Scott carried the film well, weaseling his way through a series of women, always looking for the score, the angle. Emerson was the female lead, and she handled it. Her attraction to Scott’s character was believable, as was her slow realization that his intentions were, shall we say, less than honorable. Taut direction by veteran Robert Florey (The Cocoanuts (1929), Murders In The Rue Morgue (1932), King Of Alcatraz (1938)) kept the tension high in all the right spots, while cinematographer James Wong Howe’s brilliant use of shadows and light elevate this film to very respectable film noir levels.

But Scott is really the star of this show. There weren’t too many actors in those days who could play these shameless characters with a straight face and make you buy into them, but he did it time after time. With his unswerving instincts and his solid grip on the material, he made it look so easy.

THAT DAMNED COYOTE HILL by Heath Lowrance (2011)

Reviewed by Mike Dennis

Enigmatic stranger rides into town, kicks ass, rides out.

You’ve seen it a thousand times, right? Didn’t most Randolph Scott movies follow that story line? Some might say that terse little synopsis sums up Heath Lowrance’s short story, That Damned Coyote Hill. But if they said that, they’d fall way short of nailing the essence of this riveting western-horror-noir tale that defies all known genre boundaries. You’ve never seen that story line unfold like this.

Set in the Old West town of Coyote Hill, Lowrance’s stranger shows up in a driving rain as two fight promoters are issuing challenges on behalf of their fighter. Money changes hands, cowboys step up to face the fighter, aptly named Goliath Bunker, and the spectators look on, all of them oddly mute. Hawthorne, the laconic, Charles Bronson-ish stranger, steps forward and everything changes. I’ll just leave it at that.

Lowrance, who shot onto my radar with his terrific debut novel, The Bastard Hand, has shown he’s not afraid to take chances, to take the reader into parts utterly unknown. The beginning of The Bastard Hand threw me a real curve ball, catching me totally off guard, but his prose kept me turning the page. I know this about him now, so I’ll delve into anything he writes, knowing he can transport me to uncharted areas of fiction. And That Damned Coyote Hill fulfills that promise. Lowrance has vowed to keep the Hawthorne stories coming, and when he does, I’ll be there to pick up the next one.

A great story, highly recommended.

BAD JUJU & OTHER TALES OF MADNESS AND MAYHEM by Jonathan Woods (2010)

Review by Mike Dennis

“You’ll never take me alive, coppers.”

Been awhile since you’ve heard that line, right. Sounds like it was lifted straight from a 1930s Jimmy Cagney movie, doesn’t it? Probably hasn’t been used in literature in at least that long, right?

Well, Jonathan Woods uses it, and to great effect, in Looking For Goa, one of the stunning entries in Bad Juju & Other Tales Of Madness And Mayhem, his 2010 collection of edgy short stories. This snappy read by New Pulp Press has broken new ground for avant-garde noir with Woods, one of the early additions to their string of original voices.

In this debut book, which features an outstanding cover designed by Kenney Mencher, Woods offers tales from the inner city to the tropics to rural America, characters who hover over the abyss while maintaining at least a shred of humanity. One by one, they march to the edge, each time as a result of their own bad choices, and then, in true noir fashion, wonder how they got there.

In fact, Woods’ central characters are for the most part average Joes and Janes, who just want to get through life without any hassles. For them, however, “getting through life” often entails activities such as adultery, bank robbery, and murder. If only they wouldn’t have to get in trouble for doing these things! Why doesn’t everyone just leave them alone?

In Then What Happened, Bill and Inez are getting together for a little afternoon frolic while Inez’s husband is out of town. Bill narrates: “Rearing like Godzilla from the depths of Tokyo Bay, I fall forward, burying my face in her crotch.” You get the idea. They’re having a grand old time while the TV is showing Barbara Stanwyck planning to murder her husband in Double Indemnity. Everything is just wonderful, but then…

Ah, there’s always a “but then”, isn’t there. For Bill and Inez, it leads them straight into one of Woods’ nightmare scenarios, and before you can say “Kiss me deadly”, they’re ass-deep in hell.

There’s a story of a slimy, slithering wormlike animal crawling up the nose of Ray, the central character in What The Fuck Was That? Is it just some frightened little creature who has lost its way? Is this the opening salvo of a race of brain-devouring worms from outer space looking to conquer Earth? Or did Ray hallucinate the whole thing? The author doesn’t stop with alien worms. He throws a story at you about a tiger shark on the cusp of evolutionary upheaval.

The stories are crisp, punchy, and most importantly, not what you’re expecting. Woods has taken plenty of chances here, running out to the end of the limb with his offbeat take on the short story. With Bad Juju, he’s strapped the format onto his back and carried it into thick, unmapped jungle, chopping his way through it with a perfect mix of sharp prose, black humor, and vivid plots. His next book is going to be a novel, and I for one, will be looking forward to it.

“I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. A missing piece.”

So ends what might be the greatest film of all time, Citizen Kane.

Readers of this blog know that a week or so ago, I picked up the 70th Anniversary boxed edition of Citizen Kane, and described its contents at length. I also proclaimed it to be well worth the money. Now that I’ve watched all the DVDs, I can easily say my proclamation was correct. It’s a great buy.

The film itself was digitally remastered frame-by-frame. I can’t even imagine how long that must have taken, or the skill involved. And it’s even more remarkable when you realize the original negative to the film no longer exists. The final result is breathtaking in its beauty. Welles’ long shots, with their now-famous depth-of-field innovations spring to life in sharp clarity.

Another thing Welles pulled off in the film was many long, no-cut takes. He would later become famous for this technique in the opening scene of his later film, Touch Of Evil, but in Citizen Kane, he used them to great advantage. You could make the case that Welles was really a stage actor, accustomed to long scenes, so he brought this sensibility with him to the Kane set. These scenes, in the hands of a lesser “stage actor”, might have made the whole film look like a photographed stage play, certain to put the audience to sleep.

Instead, as Peter Bogdanovich pointed out in his outstanding commentary to the film, Welles used unusual camera angles and movement, along with lighting techniques never before tried. When you see these scenes after Bogdanovich’s explanations, it dawns on you what an incredible imagination Welles possessed.

There’s a DVD documentary included in this set called The Battle For Citizen Kane, which outlines the trouble and controversy Welles faced once it got out that the film was a thinly-veiled biography of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. The documentary traces the lives of both Welles and Hearst from their childhoods, transforming them into breathing humans. Their egos were enormous, and Welles, even at 26, was clearly not cowed by the much older, more powerful Hearst.

RKO executives, who were not even allowed on the secretive Kane set, were furious once they learned the truth. Hearst threatened to refuse all advertising for RKO films, a move which might have put the studio under. He also leaned hard on the other studios, promising to plaster the country with newspaper headlines about how the Jews really ran the movie business, a fact not generally known outside Hollywood at the time. Fearing Hearst and his power to singlehandedly damage their industry, a consortium of studio heads, led by Louis B Mayer of MGM, approached RKO, offering more than $800,000 in exchange for the negative and all existing prints of Citizen Kane, for the purpose of burning them. This amount would have covered all RKO’s expenses in the shooting of the film, plus added a little profit for the studio. I shudder when I think about what we would have missed, what the movie world would have missed, had RKO accepted the offer. Seventy years later, filmmakers are still learning from Welles’ masterpiece.

Another thing I learned from this great boxed set is that Welles wanted to make Citizen Kane with actors who had never previously appeared in movies. In Bogdanovich’s commentary, he mentions that Welles almost succeeded. There was a scene with two waiters, and it seems that one of them didn’t make the call, so Welles had to hire a studio extra who had appeared in many other films, mostly as a waiter. Welles was very upset with this despoiling of his “perfect” cast.

A third DVD in the set contained the HBO film, RKO 281, with Liev Schreiber as a very convincing Welles. It chronicled Welles’ tribulations in making the film and its aftermath. John Malkovich as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz is a standout.

There are other little extras in the set, which I mentioned in my previous blog, such as a slim hardcover book about the film and poster repros, but one final thing I want to say here is a tribute to Dorothy Comingore, who played Suzan Alexander, Kane’s mistress. A tragic character, she was molded by Kane as an opera singer, down to the last detail. Her lack of singing talent quickly became apparent, and she became the one thing Kane could not create with his will and his money.

Comingore turns in what is arguably the best performance of the entire film, topping even Welles himself. At first glance, it looks like she doesn’t do much except sit around and work jigsaw puzzles, but at second glance, you begin to realize she’s a powerhouse actress, bringing this complex character to life in a very original way. As one might expect, Comingore was offered many choice parts after Kane, but she turned them all down, thinking none of them were good enough, and her career soon faded. She died an alcoholic in 1971 at 58.

Okay, everyone get your tomatoes ready to throw at me. I’m a sitting duck for this one.

I watched the 1967 film noir, Point Blank the other night. Believe it or not, I had never seen this film, although I’d always wanted to. It has rarely been on television and no one I know owns a copy of it. Frankly, it never occurred to me to buy it, since I’d never seen it.

But as I’m sure you know, the buzz on it has been tremendous for about 25 years now, since it was “rediscovered” and labeled one of the best movies of the 1960s, maybe even of all time. And with good reason. It stars Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, along with a sturdy supporting cast of well-known character actors. Marvin is without question one of the most watchable actors ever to walk onto the silver screen. With a role like this one, a revenge-seeking criminal whose partners have betrayed him, robbed him, and left him for dead, I’m thinking “No wonder everyone loves this film. It has everything going for it!”

I didn’t like it.

I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t like it is all.

For me the film had the look of a 1960s TV show. It was visually flat, lifeless and never seemed like anything more than a made-for-TV movie. Of course, the sex and violence elevated it out of the TV realm, but visually, it didn’t do it for me. The whole thing just lay there on the screen, pale and cold. Certain scenes filmed in the dark looked okay–the finale, for instance–but the daylight scenes were straight out of late ’60s network television, complete with all the standard, clichéd LA locations.

I knew there would be a problem as soon as I saw the opening credits. They were done in quick, sharp cuts, a la TV, as opposed to the softer, more subtle dissolves traditionally found in films. The sets were godawful and the harsh lighting didn’t do anyone any favors. The closeup of the broken toiletry bottles and their swirling fluids is a perfect example of ’60s excess. By 1970, all that stuff was passé.

Then there’s the story.

I know, I know, it’s great. But think about this. The story couldn’t've taken place at all if John Vernon had killed Lee Marvin, which he fully intended to do, instead of shooting him, looking at him, and running away. You remember the scene, right? There was no one around to hear the shots, Marvin was on the floor with two in him already. What’s one or two more? Preferably in the head. At least you’ll know he’s dead, which any self-respecting double-crosser will go out of his way to do.

Angie Dickinson was completely wasted yet again, as she was in so many of those 1960s movies. The scene where she slapped Marvin a few times was good, but that was about it. I never bought into her as a character. I could see her “acting” the whole time.

I lay most of this muckery at the feet of the director, John Boorman. Given the story, this film should have overflowed with grit, but it comes off as remarkably sanitized. But wait, you say, Boorman’s the guy who directed Deliverance. And The Tailor Of Panama. Surely he knows what he’s doing. Surely he’s great!

Well, yes, he did direct those outstanding films, along with a few others. But they came much later. Point Blank was really his first directorial effort (if you don’t count his UK film about the Dave Clark Five). He was feeling his way around, and let’s face it, he really didn’t know what he was doing. He was handed a terrific story with a great cast and a Hollywood budget, but he came up short.

The sad fact is, without Marvin’s compelling screen presence, this movie would be long forgotten and deservedly so.

All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for the tomatoes now.