We continue #Noirvember 2022 with a look at Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley (1947). Based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the film stars Tyrone Power as Stanton Carlisle, a smooth operator at the carnival. He works his way through a trio of women and a string of jobs always looking for that next big score but always haunted by the howl of the geek.
Samm Deighan and Andrew Nette join Mike to discuss the original and 2021 Guillermo del Toro adaptation.
Noirvember 2021 continues with a look at Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai (1947). It’s the story of Michael O’Hara (Welles), a sailor who falls in with a strange group of people: A gorgeous blonde, Elsa (Rita Hayworth), the titular lady from Shanghai, her husband, Arthur Bannister, a high-powered lawyer, and his partner, Grisby, a weirdo who wants to fake his own death and pin it on Michael.
Special Guest: Sarah Weinman Guest Co-Hosts: Carol Borden, Jedidiah Ayres
Noirvember 2020 continues with a look at Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse (1947). Adapted from the novel of the same name by Dorothy B. Hughes, the film also stars Montgomery as Lucky Gagin, a man who comes to the small town of San Pablo, New Mexico during their annual fiesta...
Jedidiah Ayres and Carol Borden join Mike to discuss the various adaptations of Ride the Pink Horse. Sarah Weinman talks about Dorothy B. Hughes's career.
#Noirvember 2020 kicks off with a look at John Farrow's The Big Clock (1947). Based on the 1946 novel by Kenneth Fearing, it's the story of George Stroud (Ray Milland) an editor at Crimeways magazine and employee of Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton). When a woman that both Stroud and Janoth have been sleeping with is murdered, Stroud is put on the case to find out who was last seen with the victim. And, of course, that last person looks a lot like him.
Terry Frost and Tim Luz join Mike to discuss the film as well as its official... and unofficial remakes.
Special Guest: Judith Mayne Guest Co-Hosts: Ken Stanley, Kat Ellinger
French Month continues with a look at Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau. Also known as The Raven, the film was released in 1943 and made by Continental Films, a German company operated in France during World War II. It’s the story of the small town of Saint Robin which is plagued by a poison pen letter writer who torments citizens with scandalous details of their lives, turning people against one another and casting a net of suspicion across the entire region.
Special guest Judith Mayne (The Woman at the Keyhole) discusses Occupation Cinema in general and Le Corbeau in particular. Kat Ellinger and Ken Stanley help Mike unpack this incredibly fascinating film.
Noirvember 2019 wraps up with Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944). With a screenplay co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler and based on a story by James M. Cain, the film is one of the seminal works of film noir. It stars Fred MacMurray as fast-talking Walter Neff, an insurance agent who gets played for a dope by a dame. The dame in question, Phyllis Dietrichson, is played by the one and only Barbara Stanwyck. The two cook up an insurance scam to pay off big after they bump off her husband.
Keith Gordon and Kat Ellinger join Mike to discuss Double Indemnity, its 1973 TV remake, the adult adaptation Eruption (1977), Body Heat (1981), and the Body Heat/Double Indemnity mash-up, Jism (2003).
We kick-off Noirvember 2019 with a look at Joseph H. Lewis’s The Big Combo (1955). Written by Philip Yordan, the film stars Cornel Wilde as Lt. Leonard Diamond. He’s a cop with a soft spot for Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace), the main squeeze of Mr. Brown (Richard Conte). Diamond and Brown play a strange game of cat and mouse as Diamond seems to pursue justice while Brown is a psychopathic thug who thinks he’s anything but.
Jedidiah Ayres and Brian Hoyle join Mike to discuss the film and posit just what that big combo of the title can mean.
Special Guest: Dahlia Schweitzer Guest Co-Hosts: Terry Frost, Eric Cohen
We continue our #Noirvember coverage with a discussion of The Big Sleep (1946). The first proper Philip Marlowe book by Raymond Chandler, it was the second appearance of Marlowe on screen, this time portrayed by Humphrey Bogart.
Eric Cohen and Terry Frost join Mike to discuss the pre-release version of Howard Hawks's film, how Bogart portrayed Marlowe, and the 1978 re-interpretation of the source material by Michael Winner.
Dahlia Schweitzer returns to The Projection Booth to discuss her upcoming book, L.A. Private Eyes.
Special Guest: Tom Williams Guest Co-Hosts: Terry Frost, Eric Cohen
We continue our #Noirvember2018 coverage with the first in a trio of Raymond Chandler adaptations -- Edward Dymytrk’s Murder My Sweet (1944). Based on the second of Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels, Farewell My Lovely, the film stars Dick Powell "as you've never seen him before."
Special Guests: Max Allan Collins Guest Co-Hosts: Kevin Heffernan, Andrew Nette
Based on the 1952 Mickey Spillane novel, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) stars Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer, a hard-boiled gumshoe who gets dragged into a mystery involving a glowing case, duplicitous dames, and two-fisted violence.
Max Allan Collins, director of Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane, talks about his career and working on Mickey Spillane's posthumous work.
Writer Andrew Nette and Professor Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss paranoia, the cold war, and much more.
Special Guests Stephen Youngkin Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Daniel Bird
In The Lost One (AKA Der Verlorene) (1951) we find Peter Lorre as Dr. Karl Rothe (AKA Dr. Karl Neumeister), working at a displaced persons camp after World War II. When a figure from his past, Hösch (AKA Nowak) (Karl John), appears at the camp the two men reminisce about their shared history during the war.
The film is a tense film noir by way of the German trümmerfilm (rubble film) and the only feature directed by Peter Lorre.
Daniel Bird and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss The Lost One, Fritz Lang's M, and much more.
Mike guested on the Masters of Cinema Cast with host Tom Jennings to discuss Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street.
From Masters of Cinema:
"If you refuse to cooperate you'll be as guilty as the traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb."
"Are you waving the flag at ME?!"
Samuel Fuller's sensational film noir, Pickup on South Street casts a steely eye at America in the dawn of the Cold War, and brings 1950s New York City alive on the screen in a manner rarely equaled in the annals of film.
In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches some radioactive loot: microfilm of top-secret government documents. Soon after, Skip finds himself mixed up with federal agents, Commie agents, and a professional stool pigeon by the name of Moe (played by Thelma Ritter in her finest role this side of Rear Window).
With its complex ideology, outrageous dialogue, and electric action sequences, Pickup on South Street crackles in a way that only a Sam Fuller movie can, and is widely considered one of the director's finest achievements.
Special Guest: Francis M. Nevins Jr. Guest Co-Hosts: Maitland McDonagh, Cullen Gallagher
Noirvember 2016 concludes with a look at Arthur D. Ripley's The Chase (1946). Adapted by Philip Yordan from a Cornell Woolrich novel, the film tells the tale of Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) a down-on-his-luck veteran who ends up working for gangster Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran) before falling for Roman's wife (Michèle Morgan) and stealing away with her to Cuba.
Cullen Gallagher and Maitland McDonagh join Mike to discuss The Chase, Cornell Woolrich, and more.
Special Guest: Stephen D. Youngkin Guest Co-Hosts: Maitland McDonagh, Samm Deighan
Directed by Boris Ingster with a screenplay by Frank Partos , Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) defines the stylistic conventions that would come to be known as film noir. The movie stars John McGuire as a hot shot reporter and Margaret Tallichet as his best gal (who eventually becomes the protagonist). He's framed for a murder committed by the man only known as "The Stranger" (Peter Lorre).
Maitland McDonagh and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss this first entry in the film noir pantheon as well as what it helped spawn. Author Stephen D. Youngkin joins the program to talk about the captivating Peter Lorre.
Difficult to find on home video for many years, Jack Bernhard's Decoy (1946) stands as a highly off-beat film noir in which Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) plays the consummate femme fatale with designs on the $400,000 her lover, Frankie (Robert Armstrong), has hidden. She needs to break him out of jail in order to get her hands on the money and does so by allowing him to be executed, only to bring him back from the dead...
Writers Christa Faust and Maitland McDonagh join Mike to discuss this usual film.
Our guests this week include Nathan Southern, author of The Films of Louis Malle: A Critical Analysis and Jack Chambers, author of Milestones: The Music And Times Of Miles Davis. Our guest co-host, Jedidiah Ayres, is a writer for page and screen.
Originally slated for release in 1955, Paul Wendkos's The Burglar didn't hit theaters until 1957 when one of it's stars, Jayne Mansfield, had gained popularity. The film stars Dan Duryea as Nat Harbin, our titular burglar. He and his crew rob Sister Sarah, a Philadelphia spiritualist, of a pricey necklace.
We'll be talking more about the film, it's screenwriter -- David Goodis -- and the 1971 adaptation, Le Casse.
Special Guests: Patrick McGilligan, Steven Rybin, Will Scheibel, & Steve Anderson Guest Co-Host: Jared Case
Noir November continues with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place. Based loosely on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as a screenwriter on the edge of madness and Gloria Grahame as the woman who tries to love him.
We're joined by Jared Case, Head of Motion Picture Collection Information and Access at the George Eastman House.
We conclude our interview with Patrick McGilligan as we discuss his book Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director.
Special Guest: Noah Isenberg Guest Co-Host: Richard Edwards
Noir November continues with a discussion of Edgar G Ulmer's Detour. Tom Neal stars as a down-on-his-luck musician who picks up the wrong hitchhiker (Ann Savage) in a tale of fickle fate, phones, and flashbacks.
We're joined once again by Professor Rich Edwards of the Out of the Past podcast and we spoke to Noah Isenberg, author of Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins (9780520235779)
Special Guest: Patrick McGilligan Guest Co-Host: Jay A. Gertzman
We start off Noir November with a bang! It's Fritz Lang's 1953 flick The Big Heat, starring Glenn Ford as a straight-arrow cop who takes on corruption in Philadelphia.
Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Andrew Nette
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