Monday, March 31, 2014

ANTHONY MANN’S RAW DEAL






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ANTHONY MANN’S RAW DEAL

by Greg Ferrara
Posted by gregferrara on March 30, 2014
from Movie Morlocks

If there’s one subset of movies that not only doesn’t require a big budget and big stars but actually benefits from lower budgets and lesser known stars, it’s film noir.  It doesn’t mean you can’t have great noirs of the big budget variety, and we have, from The Maltese Falcon to Out of the Past and dozens in between, before, and after.  It just means that sometimes noir can function exceedingly well when done on the cheap.  One of the best noirs of the forties is Anthony Mann’s Raw Deal.  In the best decade ever for noir, it stands out even among the greats.  That it didn’t get the recognition it deserved at the time now feels like Anthony Mann’s other raw deal.
All noirs take place in another world.  They take place in a world filled with shadows, broken dreams, dangerous men, and even more dangerous women.  The great thing about noir is that the best of them feel like horror movies as much as crime movies.  Raw Deal is no different.  In its opening shots, of Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe), in the visiting room at the prison, talking with social worker, Ann (Marsha Hunt), the music strikes an eerie tone, a minor organ note, held as it wavers, like the kind one hears in a horror movie when the hero is lost in the woods and danger approaches.  The lighting of the scene is ghost-like, muted light and soft focus, and the angle of the shot, a forced perspective as we look down the table behind Joe and Ann, is ominous.  It’s a great opening and sets the feel for the movie, a feeling of being trapped that the isolated visiting room conveys perfectly.
Here’s the setup: Joe’s in prison because he took the fall for Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr) and Ann, the social worker, visits him regularly in an attempt to rehabilitate him.  Pat (Claire Trevor) is Joe’s girl and comes to him with a plan setup by Rick to break Joe out of jail.  Only Rick doesn’t actually want Joe out.  As he reveals to his right hand man, Fantail (John Ireland), he’s expecting Joe to get killed in the jailbreak, at which point he won’t have to worry about Joe finding out he double-crossed him.   He’s even greased some of the guards at the prison to make sure Joe doesn’t make it.  Problem is, Joe makes it.  Pat drives the getaway car but only gets as far as the suburbs because the gas tank got hit with bullets from the break and all the gas has leaked out.  That’s when Joe gets the idea to kidnap Ann and her car to head out of town, on their way to meet up with Rick.  This puts the three of them together in one of the great noir triangles, where the femme fatale may be Pat or Ann, or both.  The film builds to a climax as taut as any thriller you’re likely to see with a few twists of plot along the way and a moral choice by Pat that’s framed as beautifully as anything I’ve ever seen.
Anthony Mann gained a reputation for lean, muscular filmmaking, a reputation he built quickly in the forties.  What does that mean exactly?  Well, in Raw Deal, it means he took characters not fleshed out by monologues and dialogue, with only hints of backstory, and working with extraordinary cinematographer John Alton, crafted characters out of light and shadow, and story out of cuts and cues.  While the Pat character narrates the movie, sometimes in the present (“we’re driving to the coast…”), sometimes in the past (“I felt a little confused…”), she reveals little about anything.  Her narration is just another way to set the mood rather than tell the story.  With Mann, action is the story.
for the rest go here:
http://moviemorlocks.com/2014/03/30/anthony-manns-raw-deal/

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Gravetapping - Ben Boulden on covers that caught his eyes



Posted: 28 Mar 2014 04:06 PM PDT
Utah Blaine is the second of three Louis L’Amour novels published by Ace.  It was originally published as by Jim Mayo and made its debut as one half of an Ace Double (D-48) in 1954. The artwork of the original paperback isn’t bad, but getting a copy could set your retirement back.

The edition that caught my eye was an early 1970s Ace reprint.  It has an alarmingly orange cover—something close to post-apocalyptic as it seems to devour the town in the background—a gunman on an angry horse firing at someone offstage.  It appears there is something close to artillery kicking up dirt geysers (actually rifle slug impacts, I’m sure).  It is a scene straight from a comic book, and I love it.  The artist is uncredited.      


























The opening paragraph:

“He was asleep and then he was awake. His eyes flared wide and he held himself still, staring staring into the darkness, his ears reaching for sound.”

I read this title as a teenager and I can barely remember the plot, but I do remember I enjoyed it. I know the edition I read was issued by Bantam in the 1980s.  The thing I really like about this old Ace paperback.  It informs the customer it is Louis L’Amour “writing under the pen-name ‘Jim Mayo’”. 


This is the fourth in a new series of posts featuring cover and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the cover art as for the story or the author.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Backlist Spotlight: Set The Night On Fire Libby Fischer Hellmann



Backlist Spotlight: Set The Night On Fire
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Dear Ed,
I came of age during the Sixties. Fortunately, I remember those years, but I've always been plagued by the times. We were so confident, so sure we were going to change the world. We didn't, of course, but why not? Were we too naïve? Too arrogant? Too stoned? Up against powers so entrenched we didn't realize how strong they were? All  of the above?  In an effort to explore those questions, and deliver an unputdownable thriller, I wrote Set The Night On Fire.
In it, someone is trying to kill Lila Hilliard. She doesn't know who and she doesn't know why. In her increasingly desperate search to find out, she uncovers information that her parents were not the people she thought they were. The heart of the book goes back to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago where six young people decide to live together in that oh-so-casual way we had back then. Their stories ultimately reveal their connections to Lila and why someone is stalking her in the present.
Some of the reviews include these:
"A tremendous book - sweeping but intimate, elegiac but urgent, subtle but intense.  This story really does set the night on fire." Lee Child
"A top-rate thriller that taps into the antiwar protests of the 1960s... A jazzy fusion of past and present, Hellman's insightful, politically charged whodunit explores a fascinating period in American history." Publishers Weekly
"A brilliantly-paced thriller, transitioning seamlessly from modern-day Chicago to the late '60s. First-rate characterization...Best to start early in the day, as it is easy to stay up all night reading it."Foreword Magazine
"Set the Night on Fire is a compelling story of love, truth and redemption. This will be a break-out novel for this talented writer. Highly recommended.Sheldon Siegel, NYTImes bestselling author of Perfect Alibi

Backlist Spotlight: Set The Night On Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann






Backlist Spotlight: Set The Night On Fire
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Backlist Spotlight: Set The Night On Fire

Dear Ed,
I came of age during the Sixties. Fortunately, I remember those years, but I've always been plagued by the times. We were so confident, so sure we were going to change the world. We didn't, of course, but why not? Were we too naïve? Too arrogant? Too stoned? Up against powers so entrenched we didn't realize how strong they were? All  of the above?  In an effort to explore those questions, and deliver an unputdownable thriller, I wrote Set The Night On Fire.
In it, someone is trying to kill Lila Hilliard. She doesn't know who and she doesn't know why. In her increasingly desperate search to find out, she uncovers information that her parents were not the people she thought they were. The heart of the book goes back to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago where six young people decide to live together in that oh-so-casual way we had back then. Their stories ultimately reveal their connections to Lila and why someone is stalking her in the present.
Some of the reviews include these:
"A tremendous book - sweeping but intimate, elegiac but urgent, subtle but intense.  This story really does set the night on fire."— Lee Child
"A top-rate thriller that taps into the antiwar protests of the 1960s... A jazzy fusion of past and present, Hellman's insightful, politically charged whodunit explores a fascinating period in American history."— Publishers Weekly
"A brilliantly-paced thriller, transitioning seamlessly from modern-day Chicago to the late '60s. First-rate characterization...Best to start early in the day, as it is easy to stay up all night reading it."—Foreword Magazine
"Set the Night on Fire is a compelling story of love, truth and redemption. This will be a break-out novel for this talented writer. Highly recommended.—Sheldon Siegel, NYTImes bestselling author of Perfect Alibi
Click here for more
Best
Libby

Friday, March 28, 2014

Death’s Sweet Song / Whom Gods Destroy by Clifton Adams now from STARK HOUSE








































  • Death’s Sweet Song / Whom Gods Destroy
  • 978-1-933586-64-9
  • Clifton Adams is best known for his westerns, but he also wrote two of the best Gold Medal noir thrillers. As August West said of Death’s Sweet Song in the Vintage Hardboiled Reads blog, "This may be the best crime fiction novel that Gold Medal published in the 50s." It’s got it all -— a beautiful, conniving woman, a vulnerable safe, and a guy with lots of moral flexibility. Whom Gods Destroy is the story of a self-destructive bootlegger and the woman he can&apost forgive. Cullen Gallagher of the Los Angeles Review of Books provides a new introduction. Available now.














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The Desert, The Prairie, and The Gutter: The Noir Novels of Clifton Adams
by Cullen Gallagher


“You were born in the gutter,” she said coldly,
“and you’ll live in the gutter all your life!”
–Clifton Adams, Whom Gods Destroy

Today, Clifton Adams is primarily remembered as an author of westerns—and for good reason. Twice he won the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award for Best Western Novel, first in 1969 for Tragg’s Choice and then again in 1970 for The Last Days of Wolf Garnett. His prolific body of work consists of titles that immediately evoke their genre, including fifty novels with names such as The Desperado, A Noose for the Desperado, and Lawman.  

Westerns may have been Adams’ specialty, but they’re not all that he wrote. In between tales of sheriffs and outlaws, Adams penned five crime novels: Whom Gods Destroy and Death’s Sweet Song (both reprinted here), Never Say No To a Killer (as Jonathan Gant), The Long Vendetta (also as Gant) and The Very Wicked (as Nick Hudson). These works stand out not only as some of his best, most harrowing books, but also as examples of some of the edgiest, innovative, and most gut-wrenchingly honest and terrifying crime fiction of their day.

Gold Medal published Adams’ first two noir novels. Whom Gods Destroy, published in 1953, is about Roy Foley, a short order cook in a slummy California diner who is called back to Oklahoma when his father passes away. He’s so broke he can’t even afford to pay for the funeral, but when he hears that the funeral was covered by charity—a charity run by Lola, the girl who laughed in his face back in high school—Roy decides to get revenge by becoming a big man in town, taking over the local bootlegging business, and destroying the reputation of Lola’s politically corrupt husband.

Published two years later in 1955, Death’s Sweet Song is about Joe Hooper, proprietor of a failing motel in the middle of nowhere. When he overhears his guests plotting a robbery, he decides to horn in and take the loot, as well as the girl, for himself.

“But all things end, if you wait long enough,” Adams wrote in Death’s Sweet Song. And, in Whom Gods Destroy, “So this is the way it ends, I thought dully. One jump ahead of the law, two jumps ahead of the chair.” Clifton Adams passed away on October 7, 1971 in San Francisco, CA due to a heart attack. Only fifty-two years old, he left behind a body of work consisting of fifty novels and more than twice that many short stories. Dying so young cut short an extraordinary career still in its prime.

We’ll never know the novels that Adams didn’t get a change to write, and that we didn’t get the chance to read. One thing we do know, however, is that they would have been great. Of that, I am certain.