Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

FLAXY TO THE MAX

When Mayo goes bad keep well clear.

What will a guy do for a girl when he’s in love? Plenty, according to Hollywood. The crime drama Flaxy Martin stars Virginia Mayo as the title character, with Zachary Scott, Douglas Kennedy, and Dorothy Malone in support. Scott plays a mobbed up lawyer who decides he wants out of the rackets, setting into motion a chain of unfortunate events in which he takes a murder rap for Mayo. It’s done out of love, but his feelings may be one-sided. Mayo has been recruited by the mob boss to use her wiles to keep Scott in line. When Scott confesses, he’s confident he’ll beat the charge defending himself in court. But the boss springs a phony witness on him and instead it looks like his goose might be cooked extra crispy.

Mayo is one of those period actresses we’ll watch in anything. Flaxy Martin is a departure from her usual fare. She’s a femme fatale of the most fatal type, playing two men to advantage, slapping around another woman, and generally smirking and sneering her way nastily through life. The question, in such a case of atypical casting, is whether she produces a believable performance. We’d say yes, but she’s the only part we believed. Little else makes sense. Absent anything resembling sexual heat between Scott and Mayo, his confession feels unlikely. Later, Dorothy Malone, as a trusting soul who picks up stray criminals, comes across as vapidly reckless rather than sweet.

Even so, there are worse ways to spend an evening than watching Mayo walk on the wild side. We imagine most actresses wanted to try on the femme fatale role back then at least once, but film noir being a relatively small slice of the cinematic pie, and studios being so controlling of actresses’ public images, most never got the chance. Mayo, a comic actress with a Vaudeville background, must have reveled in the opportunity. Obviously crime can’t pay in vintage cinema, so don’t get your hopes up that she might slide on her evil deeds. Just enjoy watching her break hearts. Also, as a side note, the movie might be worth a watch just to see mob thug Elisha Wood, Jr. pull the old gag of running out of bullets then throwing his gun. Frickin’ hilarious. Flaxy Martin premiered in the U.S. today in 1949.

Flaxy Martin, Virginia Mayo, Zachary Scott, Douglas Kennedy, Dorothy Malone, Elisha Cook Jr., poster art, cinema, movie review

PHANTOM OF THE OPERATION

Everyone says she isn't real but could a figment of his imagination cause this many problems?


Secretaries make a habit of saving the boss’s ass. It’s in the job description. In Phantom Lady, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1944, the ass saving is literal, as Ella Raines finds herself the only person who believes her employer Alan Curtis didn’t kill his wife. Curtis’s alibi is as weak as they come—he spent the evening with a woman he never met before, whose name he never got, who he can only describe as wearing a strange hat, and who nobody can find to confirm his story. She’s the phantom lady of the title—doesn’t exist, at least as far as everyone besides Curtis is concerned. So after a quick trial, off to the death house he goes, where he sinks into a state of dismal acceptance of his own oblivion. That’s when Raines decides to work her secretarial krav maga and crack the case. You think shorthand is hard? Try unraveling a vast conspiracy.

Phantom Lady also stars the great Franchot Tone, Elisha Cook, Jr., and one-ethnicity-fits-all character actor Thomas Gomez. As performers, the top end of the cast ranges from good to great, but the script isn’t the best clay with which to mold. There are positives, though. The direction by Robert Siodmak is interesting, the set design is eye-catching in places, particularly in Tone’s wacky bachelor pad with its odd concrete bed, and there’s a great bit set in a jazz cellar that plays like something out of Reefer Madness without the drugs. It’ll teach you that jazz music is crazy enough to bend reality all by itself. You’ll also learn that in case of murder it’s good to have someone in your corner. Preferably someone with a winning smile, a nice figure, and excellent investigative skills.

Phantom Lady, Ella Raines, Franchot Tone, Alan Curtis, Thomas Gomez, Robert Siodmak, poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review

STRANGER DANGER

Don't mess with the man upstairs.


Stranger on the Third Floor is sometimes cited as a proto film noir, coming a year before the first official noir, 1941’s The Maltese Falcon. In this day and age, any vintage crime film is called a film noir on crowdsourced websites like IMDB, so depending on where you look film noir isn’t as pure a cycle as it used to be. But in this case the debate is fair. The film is about newspaper journalist John McGuire, who serves as a witness at a sensational murder trial, while his fiancée Margaret Tallichet frets about the impact of recognition on their lives. The two of them are planning to move out of their boarding houses and find a place together, but McGuire’s building has lately been haunted by a mysterious stranger played by Hungarian actor Peter Lorre. Who is he? Why is he hanging around? Is he somehow connected to the murder?

Gene D. Phillips, in his book Out of the Shadows: Expanding the Canon of Film Noir, cites Stranger on the Third Floor as a film that “codified the visual conventions of film noir.” It has flashbacks, a brilliant nightmare sequence, a sense of growing dread, a false accusation (or possibly two), a narration (though not of the hard-boiled variety), and a usage of angles and shadows that is extravagant. Where it differs from film noir is in its general lack of cynicism and world weariness. In fact, it’s the opposite. McGuire ponders whether doing his civic duty by testifying will have consequences, but at no point does he feel like a sucker for doing so. He believes in society and its basic functions. The Maltese Falcon, by contrast, offers civic duty as an option, but Sam Spade acts as he does because of his personal code. Duty is secondary, and ultimately, so is love.

Despite these differences between Stranger on the Third Floor and canonical film noir, casting the net wide enough to include this movie makes sense. It definitely gets its influences from the same places as film noir, particularly in German Expressionist cinema of the early 1900s. Interestingly, Lorre would feature prominently in The Maltese Falcon, as would Elisha Cook, Jr., who plays the defendant at the trial. So the connection between Stranger on the Third Floor and film noir is concrete on that level at least. All that said, does our opinion matter? Watch Stranger on the Third Floor and debate whether it’s a film noir yourself. You’ll see a visual masterwork regardless of which cinematic bin you stick it in. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1940.

Hungary, Stranger on the Third Floor, Peter Lorre, John McGuire, Margaret Tallichet, Elisha Cook Jr., poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review

THE WOMAN IN 809

Monroe finds herself in a room with no space to maneuver.

It says plenty about Don’t Bother To Knock that we queued it up last night, popcorn and adult beverages in hand, having forgotten that we already watched it several years ago. That has less to do with the overall film than with Marilyn Monroe, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The film was based on Charlotte Armstrong’s Mischief, which was serialized in 1950 in Good Housekeeping magazine, and deals with a mentally disturbed babysitter watching over a child in a fancy New York City hotel suite.

Along with Monroe it stars Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft, with their three characters suffering respectively from derangement, detachment, and disillusionment—three ailments suggested to be caused or exacerbated by life in the big city. Widmark as a cynical single looking for easy action and Bancroft as a world weary torch singer working the hotel lounge don’t have any problems a change in luck wouldn’t solve, but the movie revolves around Monroe, who, thirteen credited roles into her career at this point, gets a chance to stretch her range as a nutty nanny in need of a lot more than just kind words to get back on the beam.

Monroe’s performance in this heavy drama is tough to judge. To us it feels a bit flat, but contemporary reviewers generally liked it, and it’s fair to say it helped her climb that last rung to the superstardom she’d reach a year later with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Watch that film and you’ll see that, while Don’t Bother To Knock asked her to stretch, it did so by requiring that she suppress her natural charisma. That’s no easy trick for an actor, let alone someone as incandescent as her, and that, in short, is probably why we forgot we’d already watched the movie. Monroe was so big in her other performances that this flick went down the memory hole. Her iconic movies feel as if they could only have starred her.

That’s our main issue with Don’t Bother To Knock—it feels like it could have starred anyone. Monroe just isn’t Monroe in it. But that possibly means her performance is a success. Watching it afresh, we can tell you it’s certainly a must for Marilyn fans, and will probably work for vintage film fans of all types. But those unschooled in the oldies might walk away from this effort thinking, Meh, I don’t get all the Monroe fuss. But the fuss was appropriate and deserved. Don’t Bother To Knock—not a film noir as labeled on many sites, by the way—premiered today in 1953.

New York City, Good Housekeeping, Don't Bother To Knock, Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, Marilyn Monroe, Elisha Cook Jr., Charlotte Armstrong, poster art, cinema, movie review

JUMPIN’ IN THE BONEYARD

There's a severe Price to pay for being a bad wife.

This French poster was painted by Roger Soubie for the cheeseball horror flick La nuit de tous les mystères, which was better known as House on Haunted Hill. Basically, Vincent Price offers $10,000 to anyone who can spend the night in a scary house, but in the meantime he hopes to get rid of his not-so-loving wife Carol Ohmart. That’s not a spoiler—in the first few minutes of the film he tells her he wants her dead. And she him. The question is will he do it? Will she kill him? Or will they kiss and make up? You could watch and learn the answers, but in our opinion, considering how much more sophisticated horror became, this one is little more than an amusing cinematic curiosity, not worth watching, though it’s notable for its exteriors of the iconic Ennis House in Los Angeles (see below). House on Haunted Hill opened in the U.S. in 1960 and reached France today in 1961.

France, House on Haunted Hill, La nuit de tous les mystères, Vincent Price, Richard Long, Carol Ohmart, Elisha Cook Jr., Carolyn Craig, Roger Soubie, poster art, cinema, horror, movie review

ANATOMY OF A ROBBERY

Making a killing at the track is harder than they think.

Tonight the Noir City Film Festival is also screening Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 crime procedural The Killing. The title refers not to murder but to making a killing—i.e. a highly profitable score. Sterling Hayden leads a cast that includes Coleen Gray, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Marie Windsor. Hayden and crew hope to rob a race track, and to do this they lay out a precise plan that includes causing a brawl at the track bar as one distraction, and shooting a horse mid-race as another. What could go wrong, right? But the crazy plan makes sense, and if you have trouble following it a stentorian narration breaks down the action for you. We didn’t mind that so much—the entire premise of the movie is that it’s a faux-documentary, so the voiceover is something you have to accept. But the trumpets and tympani on the soundtrack—wow—are way overcooked. Still, this is a nice piece of noir, occasionally running on parallel timelines, with plenty of directorial style from a twenty-eight-year-old Kubrick. Some might take issue with the film’s heavyhanded irony, but it’s all somewhat redeemed by the perfection with which Hayden delivers his final line. The Killing didn’t do well at the box office, however as often happens with films from directors who later become icons, opinions have shifted over the decades. But even if modern day critics are in agreement that The Killing is a top effort, it still won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. You’ll just have to judge for yourself.

The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windosr, Coleen Gray, poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review

HIGH FLYING FALCON

This bird is more impressive every time you see it.

The Maltese Falcon is considered by most scholars to be the first major film noir. It was also one of the best, with legendary talents John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, and Peter Lorre coming together to make magic. Mary Astor was excellent too. This must-see film premiered in the U.S. today in 1941, but the poster above—one you don’t see often—was made for its run in Australia. Put this film in the queue if you haven’t seen it. And if you have, well, watch it again.

Australia, The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, John Huston, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook Jr., poster art, cinema, film noir

FEAR OF THE WATER

It's sink or swim on the blue bayou.


Dark Waters, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1944, is an interesting movie that hinges on PTSD. They didn’t call it that back when the film was made, but what would you call it when someone can’t put a traumatic experience behind them, is nervous, prone to panic attacks, and is socially debilitated? The sufferer is Merle Oberon and her trauma is the terrifying experience of being on a boat that was torpedoed by a German submarine. She lost her mother and father in the attack, and barely survived a subsequent ordeal on the water. Take this understandably jittery person with an untreated disorder, stick her in a mansion on the creepy-ass Louisiana bayou, then have someone or someones try to drive her insane. Who’s doing the scaring? Well, that’s the entire plot, and you’ll have to find out for yourself.

We don’t think this is a top flick, but it has a pretty cool south Louisiana feel, which is worth something. There’s even a fais do-do—a Cajun dance party. It also has Elisha Cook, Jr. as a hopeless suitor and Nina Mae McKinney as a maid, which is way too minimal a role for her, but that’s the way it went for women of color in 1944. Dark Waters is fine for fans of gothic creepshows, but film noir fans should temper expectations. The movie is labeled a film noir on some crowdsourced websites like IMDB and Wikipedia, but it isn’t really. It has a nice a nighttime swamp climax, but one set piece does not a film noir make. It’s more of a gothic thriller on the order of Rebecca. Noir fans take note. Everyone else, enjoy.
Louisiana, Dark Waters, Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Elisha Cook Jr., Nina Mae McKinney, Andre de Toth, poster art, cinema, movie review
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1941—Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor

The Imperial Japanese Navy sends aircraft to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet and its defending air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. While the U.S. lost battleships and other vessels, its aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor and survived intact, robbing the Japanese of the total destruction of the Pacific Fleet they had hoped to achieve.

1989—Anti-Feminist Gunman Kills 14

In Montreal, Canada, at the École Polytechnique, a gunman shoots twenty-eight young women with a semi-automatic rifle, killing fourteen. The gunman claimed to be fighting feminism, which he believed had ruined his life. After the killings he turns the gun on himself and commits suicide.

1933—Prohibition Ends in United States

Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to overturn the 18th Amendment which had made the sale of alcohol illegal. But the criminal gangs that had gained power during Prohibition are now firmly established, and maintain an influence that continues unabated for decades.

1945—Flight 19 Vanishes without a Trace

During an overwater navigation training flight from Fort Lauderdale, five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo-bombers lose radio contact with their base and vanish. The disappearance takes place in what is popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle.

1918—Wilson Goes to Europe

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails to Europe for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

1921—Arbuckle Manslaughter Trial Ends

In the U.S., a manslaughter trial against actor/director Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle ends with the jury deadlocked as to whether he had killed aspiring actress Virginia Rappe during rape and sodomy. Arbuckle was finally cleared of all wrongdoing after two more trials, but the scandal ruined his career and personal life.

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WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

Cover art by the great Sandro Symeoni for Peter Cheyney's mystery He Walked in her Sleep, from Ace Books in 1949.

PARIS BLEUS

The mysterious artist who signed his or her work as F. Harf produced this beautiful cover in 1956 for the French publisher S.E.P.I.A.

RAISE EM UP

Aslan art was borrowed for many covers by Dutch publisher Uitgeverij A.B.C. for its Collection Vamp. The piece used on Mike Splane's Nachtkatje is a good example.

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