Re: I WAKE UP DREAMING 2012 at the ROXIE IN SF • May 11 - 24
Posted: May 22nd, 2012, 11:49 am
Last night Dewey provided a brief break in the relentless Tough Noir Art of the past week and gave us Tough Noir Entertainments on Benjamin H. Kline Day.
SHOOT TO KILL (1947) was directed by my favorite unheralded Noir director, William Berke. From around 1944 to his death in 1958, he directed a series of Tough Noir films (interspersed with some Westerns) culminating in the brilliant COP HATER (1958).
The opening scene – a cop chase shoot-out ending with the chasees’ car going over a cliff and revealing its passengers to be the dead incoming D.A. (formerly to top Assistant D.A.), his near-dead beautiful young wife-secretary, and the dead top hood he had sent to prison – is explained through a series of flashbacks, including at least one flashback within in a flashback. Double-, triple- and quadruple-crosses are rampant as the Political-Criminal Complex that runs the Big City is exposed. Central to it all is the wife-secretary who is not really the Small Town Gal her Assistant D.A. husband thinks she is and who is really married to the Top Hood who was framed by the Assistant D.A. who really was in cahoots with a rival gang. Now, finally, Big City Corruption will end.
Shot in glorious varying shades of black and gray by Benjamin H. Kline, best known for his exemplary work with Edgar G. Ulmer on STRANGE ILLUSION and DETOUR.
DEADLINE FOR MURDER (James Tinling 1946) provides international (without leaving the U.S.) intrigue surrounding stolen oil-field documents. Papers! Papers! Who’s got the papers? The theft and related murder must be solved by the uneasy alliance of a club owner/amateur private dick, the police and a beautiful young intrepid newspaper reporter (a Lois Lane type) with a flair for humor.
Shot in glorious varying shades of black and gray by Benjamin H. Kline, best known for his exemplary work with Edgar G. Ulmer on STRANGE ILLUSION and DETOUR.
SHOOT TO KILL (1947) was directed by my favorite unheralded Noir director, William Berke. From around 1944 to his death in 1958, he directed a series of Tough Noir films (interspersed with some Westerns) culminating in the brilliant COP HATER (1958).
The opening scene – a cop chase shoot-out ending with the chasees’ car going over a cliff and revealing its passengers to be the dead incoming D.A. (formerly to top Assistant D.A.), his near-dead beautiful young wife-secretary, and the dead top hood he had sent to prison – is explained through a series of flashbacks, including at least one flashback within in a flashback. Double-, triple- and quadruple-crosses are rampant as the Political-Criminal Complex that runs the Big City is exposed. Central to it all is the wife-secretary who is not really the Small Town Gal her Assistant D.A. husband thinks she is and who is really married to the Top Hood who was framed by the Assistant D.A. who really was in cahoots with a rival gang. Now, finally, Big City Corruption will end.
Shot in glorious varying shades of black and gray by Benjamin H. Kline, best known for his exemplary work with Edgar G. Ulmer on STRANGE ILLUSION and DETOUR.
DEADLINE FOR MURDER (James Tinling 1946) provides international (without leaving the U.S.) intrigue surrounding stolen oil-field documents. Papers! Papers! Who’s got the papers? The theft and related murder must be solved by the uneasy alliance of a club owner/amateur private dick, the police and a beautiful young intrepid newspaper reporter (a Lois Lane type) with a flair for humor.
Shot in glorious varying shades of black and gray by Benjamin H. Kline, best known for his exemplary work with Edgar G. Ulmer on STRANGE ILLUSION and DETOUR.