A
nifty noir done on the very cheap from Monogram. The cheapness doesn't really
matter in noir. All you need are some shabby rooms, shadows and sordid relationships
that lead to murder. This has plenty of that in an urban landscape
of bars and apartments almost empty of life. We never see people in the streets
and only a few in the bars - they don't matter - this focuses on a handful
of people who trade love and hate like cheap kisses.
This is based on a story from the sad troubadour of noir, Cornell Woolrich.
A tragic life of self-hate, alcoholism, repressed homosexuality, isolation
and a mother fixation. But he could write and he transferred his misery onto
his characters and their shabby lives, of their torn relationships, of hopelessness
- all muddled by murder and guilt. He had hopes at one time of being a great
American novelist in the footsteps of F. Scott Fitzgerald but the Depression
put an end to that. He tried Hollywood for a short period but could not handle
it and retreated back to New York City to live with his mother for 25 years
and basically never leaving the apartment till his death. But he could write
and when the Depression hit he found that one thing that sold were short
crime stories to the pulp magazine and he wrote a lot of them. Later he wrote
novels that became better known in France than at home.
A number of his writings were picked up for movie adaptations - The Bride
Wore Black, Rear Window, The Phantom Lady, The Leopard Man, Black Angel,
Mississippi Mermaid, Night Has a Thousand Eyes and a ton of others. I have
a few of his collected short stories but this one - He Looked Like
Murder - isn't among them so I don't know how much this sticks to it. It
feels like him though it is a bit jumbled - though some of his stories were
as well - and it goes from first person narration to not - and if you look
back it doesn't really add up. But it keeps you in the dark and guessing
- once you think you have it, you are probably wrong.
There are two Nancy Drews - ok Bonita Granville's in this one. Twins. One
good, one not so good. The not so good one - Estelle acts like a pinball
going back and forth between two male roommates. They both love her and hate
her. The good sister is in love with one of them as well. The sisters naturally
hate one another. When the good sister turns up dead one of the roommates
looks like easy pickings with his war related lapses of memory and fits of
anger. But maybe its the other sister or their step-father (John Litel -
Nancy Drew's father) or maybe the sometimes narrator. It literally looks
like it was shot on a dime and the murky night time scenes due to the quality
of the video don't help- but its lack of a moral center makes it intriguing.
