Signal Watch Reads: The Jugger by Richard Stark

I've never been a book series guy before, but I guess between the John Carter books and now finishing my sixth Parker novel, I'm a book series guy.

I'm totally in the bag for the Parker books by Richard Stark (aka:  Donald Westlake).


The Jugger (1965) picks up finding Parker in small town Nebraska to check on his contact and the closest thing to a friend he's got (not that he's sentimental about it), Joe Sheer.  Only to to find that the panicky letters he'd been getting from Sherer were on the money, and by the time he's arrived, Sheer has died rather suddenly.

But since his arrival, local law has been keeping an eye on Parker, and now a twerp from the criminal underground has shown up insisting Parker must be there for some reason other than to say adios to Joe Sheer.  And he's just smalltime and dumb enough to think he can play ball with Parker.

Signal Watch Double Bill: Shock Corridor (1963) & The Naked Kiss (1964)

Holy hell, y'all.

I'm not familiar with the work of writer/ director/ producer Samuel Fuller, but he has one of those names you always hear.  And, I haven't had opportunity yet to visit the Paramount yet this summer for the summer series, nor had I ever been in the State Theater on Congress, side by side with the Paramount.  Wednesday night provided a great opportunity to knock some items off my list, and so I caught both Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), two movies that earned their bonafides.

Of the two films, Shock Corridor may have dated more poorly, even if it still holds up very well from a narrative standpoint.  It follows a newspaper journalist who knows he can earn a Pulitzer by going undercover into an mental hospital to solve a murder the police have been unable to crack as the only three witnesses were hopelessly mentally ill.  He recruits his stripper girlfriend, played by the lovely Constance Towers, into posing as his sister who files charges of attempted sexual assault.  With training from a psychologist, Johnny Barrett sneaks in undetected.

And then learns that a mental hospital run under the common practices of mid-20th Century medicine was no picnic.

When they make my bio-pic, tell them this is exactly what I want the poster to look like, but with Jamie dancing in the corner.

Noir Watch: The Killers (1946)

Back in January in San Francisco I watched 1960's version of The Killers starring the lovely Angie Dickinson.

It had been a long time since I'd seen the 1946 version of The Killers, and maybe even longer since I read (and re-read and re-re-read) the Hemingway short story upon which both films are ostensibly based.

I bought the DVD of the film probably around 2004, and I've seen it a couple of times.  I still think large parts of it are phenomenal, even if watching it now, I realize how many amazing coincidences occur to help along Edmond O'Brien's good-natured insurance company gumshoe, Riordan, as he tries to find out what happened to Ole "Swede" Andreson (played by Burt Lancaster).

Noir Watch - Nightfall (1957)

A pretty good little movie with a plot that works and a lead I found... curious.

Nightfall (1957) begins in medias res, finding our lead, James Vanning (played by Aldo Ray), followed by a stranger in the streets of LA.  The stranger asks for a light, asks a few questions and moves on.  Later we learn he's an insurance investigator, Fraser (James Gregory who would go on to play Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes) who has tracked Vanning to LA.  Vanning enters a bar where he meets a young (and terribly attractive) Anne Bancroft who has managed to forget her wallet.  The two strike up a conversation, and when leaving the bar together, Vanning gets picked up by a pair of heavies (Brian Keith - who I am really liking in this era - and Rudy Bond).

Movie Watch 2012: Shadow of the Thin Man

I'm not quite ready to submerge myself back into noir at the moment, so this evening I took the half-step of watching a Nick & Nora movie, Shadow of the Thin Man (1941).

Its definitely not the place to start with the series, and it seems to dial up the goofiness a few notches (especially with how the movie deals with Asta, Nick's loyal Fox Terrier).  In fact, the whole operation has the feel of a particularly high-end hour long police procedural series one might catch on ABC (its not bone dry and soul crushing enough for CBS, and there's not enough shame involved to qualify it for NBC).  Of course, Nick's habitual drinking would probably need to land the show on premium cable or late night on FX.

But this was a movie for folks who already loved the three prior Thin Man films.  By this movie, there's a Charles child, a maid and a whole lot of domesticity.  Nora is barely seen knocking them back.

Anyway, someone gets murdered and Nick and Nora get involved, and wackiness ensues.

I can't help but note that this movie was released in November of 1941.  Pretty tough time to be getting word of mouth out there.  Myrna Loy would become heavily involved in supporting the war effort, not making another movie until the 1945 follow up to this picture.

As with all previous Thin Man films, I recommend.

Also, again, Myrna Loy.

Noir Watch Extra: Tension

Between movies, we had a bit of downtime, and so Doug and I joined Jenifer at her swanky apartment where we watched a B-Noir, Tension (1949).

Before we get any further, I had never been less sympathetic to any noir character than I was to Richard Basehart as Warren Quimby, a man who has a dilemma at one point in the movie of picking between Audrey Totter and Cyd Charisse.  Go to hell, Basehart.

Tension probably has its roots in someone reading or seeing The Postman Always Rings Twice and the pot boiler melodramas of the era.  Postman had been adapted in 1946, and while there are limited similarities, you can see that the characters are sort of pushing around what the characters did when and why.  The movie also lifts from Superman comics and Charles Atlas ads, and so one must tip their hat to the writers and director for borrowing from the best.

Noir City Special! "Laura" and "Bedelia"

On my final night in San Francisco I joined Lauren (a trooper for making it out though still weak from several days of illness), Doug, Kristen, Morgan and (of course) Jenifer for a double feature of Laura (1944) and British noir film, Bedelia (1946).

It was an interesting contrast between the two movies, and I haven't seen all that much British noir.  Really, aside from Brighton Rock a year and a half ago, not much else pops immediately to mind.

Laura, of course, I'd seen before a few times (I own it on DVD), and I've covered it here before in brief.

On this viewing, I particularly appreciated Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker.  Webb plays the role pitch-perfect as the effete, urbane and witty sophisticate, perhaps at home at the Algonquin Round Table.  With a house full of fans of the film, it was a lot of fun.

It still feels like a rather small movie, and there's no hint of the war-time release, but its still an effective picture.  Further, its not a movie that leans too heavily on Laura's place as a woman making her helpless from a financial perspective, which seems right for the time.  She may have received a break from Waldo, but she earns her place in the advertising world, and, in fact, its the towering Vincent Price who weasels for money, unable to support himself.

Noir City Special! Noir Watch: "The Killers" and "Point Blank"

On Saturday night, the Noir City festival scheduled two films from the 1960's, both starring Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin.  Angie Dickinson appeared as a special guest and we all got to enjoy Eddie Muller's interview conducted on stage.  I am happy to say that Ms. Dickinson lived up to the hype.

This year's Noir City programming strayed into (gasp) some color-era films, which immediately raises eyebrows and draws some suspicion regarding whether its true noir, at least partly because the societal forces that drove the era most thought of as noir were now passing into the rearview mirror.  By the 1960's, we'd had World War II and Korea, and were headed for Vietnam, but the US was firing on all cylinders economically.  But the underlying questions of the corruption caused by wealth (or opportunity for wealth), and the irrational things a guy will do for the wrong girl seemed as universal as ever.

The Killers (1964) is, ostensibly, based upon the Ernest Hemingway short story of the same name, but is really based upon the 1946 film starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.  Only the barest hints of the original short story remain, and the template of two intimidating thugs shaking down unprepared chumps wasn't exactly fresh by 1964.

Still, the movie works in all the ways it should as a competent heist movie.  As mentioned, the film stars Marvin as one of the pair of contract killers and Dickinson as the love interest of John Cassevetes as the film's protagonist.  In the world of seeing things you thought you'd never see, the first shot of Ronald Reagan* as Jack Browning (Reagan's final film role) paired with a pre-Mr. Roper Norman Fell as his thuggish companion drew an audible reaction from the audience at The Castro.

Noir City Guest Post! Jenifer talks "Gilda" and "The Money Trap"

Hey Signal Corps!  Jenifer has offered to provide commentary on films during the remainder of the Noir City Festival.  I'll be posting her musings as she sends them in.  Hope you enjoy.




Tonight, Noir City offered the best of Rita Hayworth, in Gilda (1946), and her not-so-best, The Money Trap (1965). Both pair her with Glenn Ford, and show the chemistry the two had on screen even after 20 years.

Gilda is well known and documented, but for those who don't know, Gilda was a vehicle for Rita Hayworth that established her as a love (sex) goddess. It's an example of how producers worked around the strict Production Code enforced on movies at the time. In Gilda, the sexual symbolism is everywhere, and the innuendo beautifully done.

The Money Trap is an odd little film starring Glenn Ford. He plays a cop married to the young, beautiful, and once-rich Elke Sommer. They aren't rich anymore, but they "live rich". Investigating what looks like a burglary where the home-owner shot the burglar, he is tipped off to a safe full of money. Encouraged by his equally money-driven partner, Ricardo Montalban, the two plan to break into the safe themselves. 

Rita Hayworth plays a long-time childhood friend and girlfriend of Ford's, married to the burglar who was killed. Though shockingly presented, it's clear that her character is meant to be run-down and aged, drinking too much, married to a crook, and waiting tables in a bar. She was 47, practically an elderly woman by movie and social standards of the time. It's a shame she wasn't that age now, when women in their forties are still seen as beautiful and even sexy.

Innuendo does not exist in this film. Everything is stated plainly, as that had become more acceptable in film. Rita has the best line. While she and Ford reminisce in a car, he tells her the time they were together on the roof of her building was his first. She says, "I know. You acted like you just discovered America." Later when they reconnect she calls him Columbus. 

I am returned (and discuss a bit about why this was fun)

No matter what they do to make flying better, its still stressful.  I am well aware they put bars in airports for a reason, but I never drink while flying, just in case they need me to take over in the cockpit.

I had an absolutely terrific time in San Francisco, helped along by Jenifer, Doug, Kristen, Lauren and non-Signal Corps member, Morgan.  I am not sure if I mentioned the SF Sketchfest, but Doug got us to RiffTrax Live, and it surpassed any expectations I had.  Our hosts were Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, but we also had guests such as Eugene Mirman, Bruce McCulloch, David Cross and Paul F. Tompkins.  Not bad.

I am still pondering many of the geographical, historical and cultural differences between San Francisco and Austin.  I have to tip my hat to the city, but I have always been most comfortable here in Waterloo, warts and all.  But we could certainly learn from San Fran.

I've been thinking a bit about the difference between something like the Noir City Film Noir Festival and the fact that Austin has SXSW, and the difference is that Austin's festivals, Fantastic Fest included, are really industry shows.  You can buy a pass for SXSW, but its a pass to get into things that people with the industry badges won't fill up.  Consequently, you tend to hear people telling you about this great documentary they saw about Peruvian peanut farmers or whatever, but there's not much in the way of just celebrating film.  Its all about selling films.

Noir City Special: We Crash Dashiell Hammett's Apartment

So, more than once I mentioned that Jenifer had lined up something highly unusual for my visit to San Francisco that was going to be a real topper for the trip out.

She told me ahead of time that she'd gotten this set up, but it didn't make any sense at the time.  After having spent a few days with Jenifer, I now get that she's just one of those people who has the near-magical ability to make things work.

Its also worth mentioning that Jenifer figured out from looking at pictures that she lives across the street from the recently renovated former apartment of pulp hero, Dashiell Hammett.

The story around the apartment itself is kind of amazing, and involves sleuthing on the part of his truest fans.  Its true Hammett lived in multiple buildings, but by looking at return addresses on envelopes from letters, descriptions of Sam Spade's apartment in The Maltese Falcon and a few other contextual clues, they've narrowed it down and figured out that this was the apartment Hammett resided at for a few years in San Francisco, and when he wrote The Maltese Falcon.

I'm still not entirely clear on how Jenifer made the contact, but this morning we met up with one of the organizers of Noir City, who had been one of those investigators and who had lived in the apartment himself and did a lot of renovations.  I won't go into specifics, but basically the apartment is now a very weird spot.  Nobody lives there, and its a residential building, so there are no tours.  Essentially its supported by a philanthropist who pays the rent and maintenance and the place sits empty most days except for an occasional tour like ours or a walking tour.

Jenifer models next to the plaque talking about Hammett outside the security door.

The building is down the street from my hotel, as well.  And one thing I've learned in my short stay is that behind a lot of these facades, there's something going on or some crazy history in a lot of these buildings you wouldn't guess walking by, be it a famous author's former residence, or a secret stash of vintage cars or swimming pools by big doors.

Just inside the doorway

It doesn't seem that anybody was really aware of the building's history until the last 20 years, and so the apartment had to be basically re-done to match the original decor.  The building went up in 1917, and so Hammett would have lived there about 10 years after it opened.  Since that time, landlords had removed doors, painted over glass, added a hundred layers of paint, etc...

Dedicated folks pieced together the apartment from fixtures in apartments from the building that were original, found items that matched the book, etc...

Its a fairly small place.  A bedroom/ living room with a murphy bed, a small bath (with the original clawfoot tub and toilet, so you can stand where Hammett stood as he showered, I suppose), a small kitchen, etc..   So this was not from a period in Hammett's life where the money was just rolling in.  Its a modest living space in a part of town with a lot of character now and then.

I did take more pictures, and when I upload them to Google, I'll post a link.

Oh, the Falcon on the desk?  I'm not sure what that's about.

No, this was not Hammett's chair, but its a nice chair, right?

Of a very special, very noir weekend, this was an unbelievable bit of history that put a near surreal spin on things.

Thanks to Jenifer for arranging the tour (and so much more during my stay), to Bill who was more host that tour guide, and Doug, who was... there, I guess.

More pics when I get home and get them off my phone.

Noir Watch (Noir City Edition): Dark Passage and The House on Telegraph Hill

Friday evening I attended the opening night of the tenth edition of the Noir City film festival, hosted by Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir.

We attended the reception ahead of the show, which was a real kick.  Lots of folks in approximations of period attire.  You can see myself and J__Swift below.  

a very vintagey reception at The Castro

I had seen Dark Passage (1947) twice before, and hadn't particularly loved it the first time, liked it much more on the second, and loved it on the big screen on this go round.  The movie takes the risk of starting from the protagonist's POV, literally, and that part of the movie goes on for a bit, which is why I think I was a bit turned off the first time I watched the movie.  It seemed like a stunt, but on the big screen versus the 27" TV I watched it on the first time, it really, really works.

A Noiry Night

Noir City X is in full swing. The Festival opened this evening with the video below, a loving clip show of some great movies.



Great stuff.

This evening I met the great Eddie Muller and got to see two fantastic movies, Dark Passage and The House on Telegraph Hill. More on those later, I suppose.

Anyway, a terrific night out with J__Swift and her pal, Morgan. Hope things are well with you.

Dark Vacation

Well, on Thursday I am off to San Francisco for the 2012 Noir City Fest.  I'll be in San Francisco from Thursday afternoon until Monday morning.

I expect if you want to see me whilst I am in the Bay Area, you'll know how to track me down.

The schedule is pretty packed, but I do plan to write up all the movies one way or another as part of Movie Watch 2012.


Thursday night I'm actually headed for Riff-Trax Live with Dug, K and J__Swift.  Possibly MikeF and Rus.  We'll see.


Despite living in the town with the Austin Film Festival, SXSW, Fantastic Fest and more, I've never bothered with a film festival, so this is all new to me.  Mostly I wonder about how well my back can handle sitting in movie-theater seats this many hours.

between you and me, I hope this doesn't happen to me while I'm there

Jenifer (our J__Swift) has arranged a special EXTREMELY AWESOME/ SUPER NOIR event for me on Sunday that I'm keeping under my hat until I can post photos.

I got some hints on FaceBook about places to eat, etc...  we'll see if I can pull that off given our crammed schedule, but I appreciate the hints.

So, no idea what the next few days will hold, blog-wise.

Movie Watch: Horse Feathers & Niagara (and one day I will learn to spell "Niagara")

I am going to mention every single movie I watch this year.  I'm sort of curious.

Horse Feathers (1932) - The Marx Brothers.  Nothing will beat Duck Soup for me, but I'd definitely watch it again.  "Where's the seal?" won for best visual gag, but it had stiff competition.  I'm a sucker for any Marx Bros. flick, and this was a better way to spend 1.25 hours than whatever else was on TV.

Also, who doesn't like a movie about college football that includes cigar smoking on the field?

The movie co-stars the lovely Thelma Todd, who has a pretty chilling Bio page on IMDB.

Niagara (1953)  - For something so amazingly noir, this was one bright, colorful movie.  As I understand it, this was one of the movies that catapulted Marilyn Monroe to stardom, and its not hard to see why.  We forget sometimes that she's not just a still shot, she was an actress, and a pretty good one.  Not as good as Jean Peters (also an extraordinarily lovely woman), who is also in the movie playing a woman caught up in the noir story going on in the next bungalow over, but Monroe just fills a frame like few others, even when you know she's coming.  Also stars the always terrific Joseph Cotten as Monroe's anxiety-ridden husband on the path to Dark City.  And you will want to strangle Max Showalter (who would go on to play goofy Grandpa Fred in Sixteen Candles) for his corn-fed dorkiness.

And starring Jean Peters!  Who, yeah...  on the poster?  Is she one of those silhouettes on the bridge?  No?

San Fran in Jan(uary)

Heads up, Bay Area folks.

So, in January I'm headed for San Francisco.

I arrive on the 19th.  I had originally planned to run around the city and whatnot the first night, but it turns out that its the first night of the San Francisco SketchFest.  As part of the Sketchfest, the crew from RiffTrax is performing on night 1 of the SketchFest.  So, while this means I may have a problem with the Alpha Plan of @#$%in' &%#@ up in San Francisco on the 19th, it does mean I get to go to SketchFest see the guys from RiffTrax do a bunch of shorts.  And that is awesome!  (and, no doubt, means extra time hangin' with The Dug and a more likely scenario of seeing MikeF and others)

Oddly, the event is at the Castro, where I will also be the following few days.

The schedule and tickets are now available for Noir City X, the tenth installment of the Eddie Muller-helmed Film Noir Fest.

I'm in and out of town fairly quickly as a man can only afford to stay in one place too long, and the fact that every time I leave work for a few days, some disaster is awaiting me on the other side.

I'm pretty darned excited.  The line-up for both before and after I'm there features some great films I've seen and a long list of films I haven't seen.  If you live in the area, take advantage.

I am a bit down that I'll miss Naked Alibi on Thursday, which features both Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame (and I've been trying to track it down for a while), and it seems this year they've moved the party to the second weekend, so I'm missing that.  But they did add Angie Dickinson to talk Point Blank, which is a great movie, so I'll get to see her in person.

But I also will be looking to fill days while I'm around, so if you have helpful touristy hints for me that don't involve wandering The Tenderloin in a Batman costume, I'd like to hear them.

and then there was the time I found out my favorite movie was "heavily borrowing" from another movie

This evening I finally watched the 1942 film The Glass Key, a movie I've been trying to see since I first watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) the pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire.  Ms. Lake would have been 92 today, and so TCM was showing some of her films.

all movie posters are better when they feature William Bendix playing a little chin music

At age 15 I rented Miller's Crossing from my local video store. I had just seen The Godfather for the first time the previous summer thanks to my uncle's remarkably good movie selection (he also showed me Das Boot) and I was young, impressionable and learning about both gangster flicks and cinema. And so when Miller's Crossing landed in my VCR, I simply had never seen anything like it.  My entire world of gangster movies came from Godfather I & II and maybe The Untouchables.  I was utterly unfamiliar with the topsy, turvy world of the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, etc...

Books, Comics, Personal and Movies - Come read a round-up, won't you?

I'm not really feeling like doing some big, hefty posts at the moment.  Perhaps all the DCNu has worn me down.

Books:  On my quest to get to books I haven't read yet that you're supposed to read, I'm currently listening to The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.  It's read by actor Dylan Baker, who I've always thought to be really good, no matter the project he's in.  And he's doing an awesome job thus far with this book.

Comics:  I just read Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader from Vertigo Comics' Vertigo Crime line (my first dip in).  Its a pretty good detective story in the classic vein, but with a lot of modern sensibility despite its 1953 time-setting.  The protagonist/ narrator is very deeply in the closet, but its really the post-Chinatown content that keeps the 50's a setting rather than being truly evocative of the period.  Still, a good, brisk read.  And now that these books are in paperback and the price dropped, a lot better deal.  Feels a lot more like the dimestore novel this book emulates in spirit.

Personal:  My folks are off the Las Vegas for the first time.  It cracks me up.  They've been all over the planet, but I wasn't sure how to prepare them for the most ridiculous place I've ever been.  "Go to the Bellagio!" I said, unsure of what else to tell them.  What am I supposed to do?  Recommend The Gun Store to The Karebear?

Movies:  For some reason the 1984 film Streets of Fire kept coming up, so this evening I made Jamie watch the Michael Pare vehicle.  The entire movie makes so much more sense when you realize Jim Steinman, the brains behind Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II wrote some of the movie's music, and no matter what they tell you, this should have been a Meatloaf musical.  It also stars all kinds of folks you know from other projects from Rick Moranis to Robert Townsend to Willem DaFoe and a very, very young Diane Lane.

Dude, I can only wish that "what it meant to be young" for me had included shotguns, cool cars and Diane Lane.

The dialog is pretty goofy in that way tough-guy dialog from the 1980's just absolutely doesn't work at all anymore (and not because of dated slang, etc...  It was like they were just learning how to use swears back then).  And frankly, I'm not sure anybody is very good in this movie, but its absolutely interesting.

Signal Watch Watches: Drive

By this time you've likely read a good review or two of the recently released Drive.  Don't expect me to contradict those reviews.  Of our party, I believe four out of four participants (all of varying movie tastes) seemed to agree that Drive was a pretty darn good film.

I make jokes about certain movies being to my taste, and, yes, I am more likely to go see movies about superheroes, etc...  But I also like well thought-out, taught crime movies, and Drive is most certainly one of these.  

The movie doesn't just know exactly what it is, its hyper-aware of its roots both narratively and stylistically in the late-70's, early-80's and works both within and marginally outside the framework of those movies.  Perhaps suggesting there are no new stories, it also reaches back to certain elements that those 70's and 80's movies could trace back to Noir, and crime movies like The Big Heat or 1947's Kiss of Death (edit:  upon reflection, I'd be remiss to not mention This Gun for Hire as a sort of primordial influence), wherein the manipulations of criminals and the needs of those outside their worlds get crossed.

Yeah, the driving in the movie is pretty great, but I think its the storyline and performances that sell it.  Its an oddly understated movie for the first half, actually giving you a reason to care - something movies like Too Fast, Too Furious couldn't begin to wrap their mutton heads around, or that the average Jason Statham vehicle misses by a country mile.  

When the violence does erupt, director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn't shy away from the brutality of what's happening.  There's no romanticized "ballet of violence" as we've become accustomed to in most American movies over the last 15 years (nor the "kids playing guns" approach of the Schwarzenegger era).  It could be said to play for shock value if every act of violence didn't just up the stakes of the story and push our lead, played by Gosling, further and further into a corner.

Refn's vision is complete in a way I don't see out of many younger directors these days, with everything from the color of traffic lights telling part of the story to the choice of titles and musical selections winding throughout the film.

The movie clearly cost nowhere near what a Transformers film or even a Fast & Furious franchise installment would set back the studio.  I'm not naive enough to think studios will take note of the narrative success of the film, or to think the marketers have done enough to get the word out that this isn't a standard actioner.  It likely won't kill at the box office.  But you can hope for the best.

The cast is very good, of course.  Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks, Christina Hendricks, Oscar Isaac, and both Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling (whom I'd never seen) were pretty great.

Anyhow, I'm recommending those of you who can deal with some blood in your movies check this one out while its still at the theater. 

Some movies I should have commented upon

A Kiss Before Dying - Its hard to watch this movie without thinking how its been emulated a 1000 times over since this movie was released.  Its not a bad movie, and it features Robert "Yeah, totally THAT guy" Wagner as our heavy.

The Red Shoes - People had kittens when this move was restored, and that was the first time I think I'd heard of it.  I missed its theatrical release but caught the movie on cable this week.  A movie that I was expecting to be "good" turned out to be truly a great movie.  Just masterfully handled.

yes, its a movie about ballet, but... uh... yeah, its a tough guy movie with, uh aliens and helicopters and stuff, too.  Totally my usual thing.

Kiss Me Deadly - Man, this is the strangest damned movie I've seen in a long, long time.  50% detective, 25% celebration of sociopath, 20% noir and 5% sci-fi, of all the damned things.  I have very mixed feelings on this movie, but its really hard to ignore.

In a Lonely Place - Bogart and Gloria Grahame, directed by Nicolas Ray.  Its filed under noir, and I think I can see why, but its a great thriller/ character study and gets past the veneer of most noir and can feel almost awkward in parts as the characters tumble into distrust and their own miscommunications.