In The Days When Parlor Pink Private Detectives Ruled The Roost- The Film Adaptation Of Crime Novelist Agatha Christie’s “The Pale Horse” (1997)- A Review

In The Days When Parlor Pink Private Detectives Ruled The Roost- The Film Adaptation Of Crime Novelist Agatha Christie’s “The Pale Horse” (1997)- A Review     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Pale Horse, starring Colin Buchanan, based on the crime novel of the same name by Agatha Christie, 1997  

[In the interest of continuity although this review was written well after a previous one by Sarah Lemoyne reviewing Dick Powell’s Varsity Show I have placed it here today with hers since the pair are still in the throes of their “dispute.” Greg Green, site manager]   

This is no pun I am on my high horse, pale or otherwise, today. No, not about this so-called dispute between my old friend from high school day Seth Garth’s young protégé or whatever else they have decided to call her relationship with him Sarah Lemoyne. Mentor is the word I think they have been using to try to cover up whatever is going on there. When Seth Garth is involved, as in the interest of transparency I will admit was true of me as well when I was younger, when it comes to women younger or older don’t believe a word of “just friends” noise, a word of denial. That is when you double down on a guy like Seth as I have learned from bitter experience in the days when he would think nothing of sweeping up some woman I was interested in with no moral qualms whatsoever. Would laugh at an expression like “moral qualms” a term unknown to hard corner boys from the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville and by extension in the cutthroat world of film reviewers where if you don’t cut somebody’s idea, some witty insight, some weird take on a film then you are not long for the profession. Why else would anybody put up with such doings when you are only giving your subjective opinion for the world to feast on (and now on the downside of the Internet experience have to put up with all kinds of dingbat thoughts from average citizens who know think that based on having seen a film that gives them the right, the god-given right to read some of the stuff to bore the rest of us with their ill-considered “takes” on the spot).    

In any case that is not what I am after today although I continue to steam, mighty puffs of steam, over the now almost libelous comments Ms. Lemoyne has made about who has, or hasn’t, written my reviews for me other than myself once I moved up the film review food chain many years ago. Totally libelous and subject to legal action if I was that kind of guy but I am not a snitch is the false accusation that long ago I used the studio press releases as my reviews with just the top snipped off and mailed in to whatever publication I was writing for at the time. I have just mentioned the cutthroat nature of our profession, so I am inured to such misinformation about my career. I will admit Ms. Lemoyne writes good reviews and had enough sense to go to Seth as a mentor or whatever he is to her at the office or elsewhere, but I can handle these young and hungry types since that is exactly where I started out trashing the legendary film critic Walt Wilson when he was riding high and now nobody remembers his name. What has me burning up today is one Greg Green’s lame attempt to bring back parlor pink private detectives with this review of the film adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels The Pale Rider. (Pale rider a reference from the Bible meaning death a not unimportant part of the plot line in both the novel and the film which diverts from the novel in several ways but is on point about the death part, plenty of it and who the hell the pale rider is when the deal, the final deal, goes down)

Everybody knows, everybody seriously interested film noir which hinges in many cases on the plots of crime novels, knows that I have written what many, except apparently the totally ignorant Ms. Lemoyne who was not even born when I made my big splash and whom Seth should have wised up, call the definitive book on film noir. I like to think that the reason for that status was my ground-breaking work on the private detective novel on film with its moody, dark scenarios and hang-by the fingernails twists and turns before the crummy felons get some quick and rough justice from our mere mortal no superhero bombast gumshoes.  Moreover that noir explosion and the work of crime novel writers like Jim Jenson, Jack Cullen, and above all Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett had put paid to the old-fashioned amateur detective sitting around waiting for the villain to out of shame or something throw up his or her hands and come clean, come to justice without so much as by your leave. Take a warming cell or the big step-off for their errors in judgment while the crafty amateur goes off to lunch or on holiday after such strenuous work.

As Zack James, my and Seth’s old friend Alex’s youngest brother, has made clear in a number of astounding crime short stories about real private detectives this is no business for amateurs. I heartily agree since that profession is mainly about “repo” work the professional repo men can’t handle, bogus insurance claims, missing husbands or wives, looking for lost animals, dogs and cats mainly, and in the old days, peeping Toms on divorce cases involving sultry adultery (and which saved many a struggle P.I. before no fault divorce and just living together destroyed that part of the market leaving some guys, mostly guys, with nothing but hanging around a beaten down desk taking generous slugs from the low-shelf whiskey bottle in that bottom desk drawer). But on the screen, and in crime novels, those gumshoes, those peepers get the royal treatment, get the royal treatment if they are hard-nosed, tough, wind-mill chasers, skirt-chasers, heavy smokers and drinkers, and not afraid to take a slug or two, a roughing up for the good of the cause. Lenny Larkin was the epitome of the type who was also not afraid to whiplash a guy for looking at him the wrong way. Naturally when you mention Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe chasing a million wind-mills for some old general, or looking for some lady in the lake, or looking for big Moose’s lady friend comes to mind. Sam Spade of course from the Dashiell Hammett stable not only chased skirts, took a few punches for her, but when it was him or her he sent her over, sent her to the big step-off and the fuck with the stuff of dreams trying to own some freaking fake bird.

Which brings us to this little film. What we have here, a guy named Eric somebody does the last name matter since he is not going into the annals of private detection, no way. A damn sculptor, not even an amateur detective but a guy who makes art, modern art and not bad from the quick looks we get when he is around his art gallery, a guy who is trying to keep the noose from around his pretty head when he is accidently involved in a murder when he looked too much like the real felon and the coppers, the public coppers, as they will grabbed him and were ready to call it a day on the case. Sent him off with a smile claiming he wasn’t much of a sculptor anyway. Case closed.

They set this film in 1960s London so you get a modish crowd as background including two young women, one very rich and proper taking a ride down in class to give our Eric a run for his money but whom he spurns and another, Rhonda something does it matter her last name since she will not go down in the annals of private detection, no way. The latter he met at a funeral after her friend had died from what appeared to be some natural cause disease. The connection. The priest who was supposed to bring a message to a third party as the deathbed wish of another women who also appears to have died of natural causes is the guy whom Eric is supposed of have murdered and Rhonda friend’s name was on that message. Rhonda is not buying natural causes and so she is on board as an assistant sleuth. No femme fatale not at all but another freaking amateur detective to gum up the works. 

Later naturally as well there will be a love interest between these two and I can’t blame Eric on that score since she is one of those fetching types, yes, the ones who are not ice cold beautiful with personalities to match but the ones who an hour later you wonder what they are doing and are willing to do it with you. But just as naturally in these parlor pink private detection novels there is a red flag, although I hesitate to use that expression now that it is a catch word among the world’s growing population of conspiracy theorists. A prime suspect for this gumshoe pair centered on an eccentric wealthy art collector who had been chair-ridden since youth with polio. That was a ruse though, a cover for a very successful bank robbery in which the plotline involved taking the robbery proceeds and investing in art. Investing in a time when the art market was exploding, and he actually when “outed” as prime suspect for a while got to keep his ill-gotten gains. No, the real villain, the guy who in his psychopathic mind went over the edge was the attending physician of a number of patients who had been involved in what turned out to be an insurance fraud scheme with a few modern-day witches a la Macbeth and a bookie covering the insurance angle and the good doctor subtlety poisoning them using ordinary consumer goods like toothpaste as the murder weapons. 

Nice play, nice racket which any old Acre corner boy would appreciate but when Rhonda became the subject of the scheme and nobody knew how to cure her you know that mad monk doctor was doomed. It was the toothpaste, stupid. Get the freaking antidote asap. In the end Eric and Rhonda go off in the sunset their amateur private detection minute over. Not a minute too soon either.               

Everybody Loves A Con Man-Except-Ryan and Tatum O’Neal’s “Paper Moon” (1973)-A Film Review

Everybody Loves A Con Man-Except-Ryan and Tatum O’Neal’s “Paper Moon” (1973)-A Film Review     

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Paper Moon, starring Ryan O’Neil, Tatum O’Neal,directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 1973

Every theater-goer, at least I am going to assume so, likes a “feel good” storyline. Maybe not as first choice but in the basket. I confess to that feeling. But as an old corner boy from the working class neighborhoods where I grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire I also appreciate a good “con” storyline. Not con as in convict but as in con artist and although we had plenty of both in the old Acre neighborhood I gravitated toward the latter, except when the con was on me which it was a few times. The film under review Paper Moon with the father-daughter team of Ryan and Tatum O’Neal going through their paces gives us that combination I have mentioned.            

Here’s the spiel. Here’s basis of the con in this one.  Moses Pray (great name given the grift he is working) is a Bible salesmen in Great Depression-era Kansas and Missouri (that Great Depression the one in the 1930s not the more recent one this century). His grift, check out the obituary columns of the local newspapers to see what men had passed to the great beyond recently (in the days when such publications were plentiful) and head out to the bereaved widow and hustle her into paying for a Bible, a deluxe edition Bible, which the late breadwinner had ordered prior to passing away. Since the Bible was inscribed to the vulnerable widow they usually paid for the thing. Nice steady work. Later when times were tough Moses would step up in class and do the classic sell (bootleg whiskey in the specific case) the owner his own goods con (with untoward results). But the basic style of Moses had been etched in that Bible hustle.       

  

The “feel good” parts in when Moses attends the funeral in Kansas of a woman friend with whom he had been intimate. That is when he met his nemesis (and maybe his on-screen daughter) Addie, played by Ryan’s real life daughter Tatum. She is an orphan with no place to go except her mother’s sister’s house in Missouri. Moses gets corralled into taking her to the sister’s house and the bulk of the film is centered on the adventures and misadventures of the pair on the way there. The most important part to note of this pairing is that Addie has almost as larcenous a heart as Moses. Maybe it was genetic if the suspicions about Addie’s unknown father had any basis. Through a series of events, cons, including that ill-fated hustle of that irate bootlegger Moses and Addie bond, bond as thick as thieves. Yeah, a con and “feel good” that is the ticket.             

In Defense Of Inter-Species Love-“The Shape Of Water”(2017)-A Film Review

In Defense Of Inter-Species Love-“The Shape Of Water”(2017)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Shape of Water, starring Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, 2017

By rights this review, the review of the 2018 Oscar for best picture The Shape of Water should have been done by Frank Jackman. While we no longer have specific titles to reflect our areas of various expertise Frank has long been the main political and cultural reporter on this publication. You ask how does a film about the improbable love affair between a disabled woman (a mute), a member of the human species, and a good looking if scaly creature from the lagoons down the Amazon warrant a political touch. Well beyond this seemingly blatant attempt to win “flavor of the month” status for yet another oppressed identity group there is the now wide- open question of whether we, meaning the human race should permit not only love between members of different species but permit different species marriage.

However, if Frank had tackled this film from that approach he would have had a hell-broth of anti-gay, anti-same sex marriage crazies to contend with who would have claimed that they had been righteously right to oppose those rights because see where does the madness end and what about the sanctity of marriage when human pair with other sentient being. Jesus it would be a blood-bath and Frank would probably have to leave town or take an alias-maybe go out among the Mormons like Allan Jackson tried to do, allegedly tried to do from what later reports by him informed us happened and see if he could hustle some work with them.

So I drew the assignment as a favor to new site manager Greg Green since he wanted to cash in on a different variation on the “boy meets girl” theme that continues this one hundred plus years later to be a huge hook for Hollywood productions (and a big money maker too). And so you have what started out a mere curiosity by Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, a “talking challenged” person (hell I don’t know what you call it although I know mute is far too cutting these days reminding me, and maybe one and all, of the timid person who came up to you in the street cards in hand claiming deafness and dumbness asking for cash donations. Asking especially when you had a date you were out to impress with your humanity and gave the person some change. Some of this I learned later when I was down on my luck was a classic scam but some of which is the only way to get cash for hard-pressed people with a disability in those days) when a mysterious creature from out in the Amazon (a creature straight out of the 1950s creep thriller The Creature From The Black Lagoon) who looks like maybe some missing link on the evolutionary trail is secreted in secret CIA-type operation location where she is a cleaning lady to try to figure out how to use the thing in the on-going Cold War then raging between the United States and the former Soviet Union.       

That curiosity about a sentient being also trying to survive in a troubled world will eventually turn into what between humans would be called love, and maybe in inter-species lingo as well. The problem is that the creature is being mistreated, mishandled by the agent in charge to the chagrin of Elisa and others including a scientist who is actually a Soviet spy. Moreover when the agent in charge is ordered to vivisect the amphibian all hell broke loose as Elisha plotted her honey’s great escape. After a few close calls and some fancy foot work Elisa gets her man out of harm’s way for a while. In the inevitable eventual confrontation before she can release her now ailing guy (not enough sea water to keep his strength up) to the open seas where he will be at home again they are both injured by that wicked Cold War agent who in return is wasted by the amphibian. Things work out okay though because this mad monk monster has some curative powers which gets he and his honey well in the open ocean. Things work out well but if and when “inter-species” marriages become the flavor of the month among progressives and others watch out all bets are off. But at least you know where the campaign got its start.      

When You Are Lost On The Great White Way, Broadway … And Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Varsity Show” (1937)-A Film Review

When You Are Lost On The Great White Way, Broadway … And Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Varsity Show” (1937)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Varsity Show, starring Dick Powell and a bunch of Lane sisters, the inevitable last dance segment directed by max daddy (Seth Garth’s expression) Bugby Berkeley, 1937  

Sometimes you just can’t win when you try to be nice, try to stop a growing dispute with fellow colleagues in what everybody knows is a cutthroat go for the jugular “you are only as good as your last piece” somebody is lurking to take your place profession like film reviews in its tracks. Damn, can’t get any traction out of calling a truce so that you do not have to start off every film review, maybe every piece at this publication with what in normal times would be ho-hum stuff best reserved for titter around the office water cooler. Maybe what the older writers have told me, especially my mentor Seth Garth the film reviewing business does not allow for anything but cutthroat dog eat dog animus. Although that shouldn’t be so apparently to go up, and stay up, on the review food chain you must at least mortally wound whoever your competitor of the day is. For now this brewing confrontation must see the light of day if I am to protect my growing reputation and if I am to keep my hard fought place in the food chain since one Sam Lowell, whom I off-handedly characterized as wizened and in his dotage in my last review of a Dick Powell film from the 1930s Hollywood Hotel  had decided that I need “my comeuppance” over those remarks and what followed.     

Sam bogusly claims that my review of the Powell vehicle was not written, could not be written by me since my only source of information about the period of the 1930s and 1940s musical was my grandmother who was a child held on her mother’s knee back then watching these “feel good” films to get through some tough times. He has suggested that the only way this review could have been does as well as it was is if somebody more familiar with the times wrote the damn thing (his expression). Sam insinuated that the only person he knew who could handle such a review having done a series of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films was his old friend, still friend I assume, Seth Garth my kindly mentor had written the piece and that I put my by-line name on the thing and sent it in to Greg Green as my original work.

Of course Sam is looking for tit for tat since he knows that almost everybody in the office over the age of ten knows that he has a very large reputation going all the way back to the 1960s of having somebody write his reviews for him, usually stringers, usually female stringers to boot or in desperation after some three day drunk or cavorting just used the studio publicity department press releases and signed his name to the document. I hear one time and if I am libeling him so be it he was cavorting with some stringer on a three- day toot or something like that and sent the press release in without clipping the studio name off the top. His old buddy, another one of the half dozen or so guys from high school days who have written for this publication over the years, editor Allan Jackson published it as is Sam’s star was so high back then.  Seth Garth has been kindness itself in helping me up the ladder in the business and had provided suggestions but that is it. I write my own material.  Period.

More grating, more insidious is that Sam has taken up the salacious office water cooler gossip about some relationship beyond the mentoring one between Seth and myself implying that I would get ahead on his coattails if I was nice to Seth. In that Hollywood Hotel review I made it quite clear that Seth and I had merely a professional relationship and that it would be absurd for me to have a personal relationship with a person old enough to be my grandfather. I, moreover, mentioned that my companion has been having fits over these rumors and we have had some shouting matches when she heard the last product out of the rumor mill. Sam, the treacherous little wizened bastard, that wizen thing always gets to him from what Seth has told me has been spreading the word that something is up between us ever since he out of that kindness I mentioned before took me to dinner one night.

Sam’s hook, Sam’s fucking “hook” that is he is forever yakking about as necessary to draw a reader in as if that wasn’t lesson one taught in journalism graduate school is that Seth is just living out the life of Johnny Silver. Johnny, who I don’t know from Adam, is one of their infamous and constantly talked about 1960s high school corner boys who Seth wrote about in a long series of short pieces when he got tangled up with a graduate student from Penn State after they had “met” on Facebook a few years ago. That romance, that intergenerational sex, between the pair who are still together is the hook Sam used to imply that his old corner boy Seth was making the same kind of moves on me. Don’t these guys, maybe gals too but I don’t know about that, ever think anything can be anything other than some sex scheme when guys and gals are out together. Like I said my companion went wild when she heard I had gone to dinner with Seth since he received an e-mail about it from “anonymous.” I know there will be more in this war of words but I will say Seth was right when he told me Sam was not above anything and to be careful. He said he had known the wizened (a joke between Seth and I now when we are referring to Sam in our mentoring sessions) Sam too long to expect any quarter to be given. I have come a long way in a short time, with Seth’s help, so I will not play the wilting violet. To the review.                     

Boy meets girl. Well if you want my opinion that is essentially what this well-worn Hollywood trope is working overtime on when you get to the close of Varsity Club. This a college-based piece of fluff in the days when college entrance was very circumscribed and mainly for the children of the elite, of those who have already made it. Number one in making it was Chuck, Dick Powell’s role, an alumnus of some private small maybe denomination Middle America school like Kenyon or Oberlin Winfield College, who has made it big on Broadway although at the start of the film he is on cheap street after producing a few flops, the kiss of death to backers of such efforts. Meanwhile back at his old alma mater where they are revolting, not revolting against the injustices and inequalities of the Great Depression that my dear grandmother had to survive with lots of trauma, but against an edict by the head of the music/drama department that the annual varsity show should not disturb the dead. Not keep anybody awake. Be pure vanilla meaning no cavorting (which would  by reputations leave both withered Sam and sweetie Seth out), no close boy-girl scenes and above all even in fully-clothed post-Code days no references to sex, or maybe even biology.       

The kids (although most look much too old to have been in college then although today they would not stand out with the demographic mix these days with people going to college for lots of reasons, mostly serious, at older ages to get ahead in the world a bit) don’t know what to do until some bravo latches onto the idea that they contact good old Chuck to see if he can’t bring the thing into the 20^th century. After plenty of built-up, a few songs, a budding romance with a sorority sister, one of the famous Lane sisters but I am not sure if it was the one he snagged in Hollywood Hotel he falls short, cannot move the production forward. Then led by Professor Fred Waring (and his Pennsylvanians in tow) the whole cast winds up in New York City, on the big white way where they will put on a bootleg production since the staid college stage is out. Aside from the boy-girl thing between Powell and Lane the virtue, the reason for existence of this mercifully short film is the Bugby Berkeley show-stopper finale choregraphed to perfection in the way that he and very few others could do. Finis. Well, no, anybody who was not old and wizened maybe a shade bit senile in his dotage could tell in two seconds that this review was written by me, by Sarah Lemoyne. Got it.