Star Pick with Kurt Angle

Though we have all become accustomed to November being coined Movember, there is another moniker that is perhaps lesser known. ‘Noirvember’ has, over the last few years, gone viral, making this eleventh month of the year the perfect one to celebrate the shadowy, gloom filled, doom-laden film noirs of the 1940s and 50s. So, I thought I would start us off with a bang by reviewing the classic 1947 crime noir Out of the Past. Written by Daniel Mainwaring (he wrote the screenplay and the novel the film is based off of under the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes – titled "Build My Gallows High") and directed by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People), past mistakes meet present danger when gas station owner Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), who has been hiding in a small California town after a torrid life, is tracked down by Joe Stefanos (Paul Valentine), a trusted henchman for a smooth but sketchy gangster named Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas).

With the steamy heat of summer upon us, it is time to revisit one of my favourite genres – the dark, seductive, hard-boiled stories of film noir (from the 1940's and 50's). Billy Wilder, one of the great directors of the twentieth century, created three classics that fall within this genre: 1944's Double Indemnity (which I have already reviewed), 1951's Ace In the Hole and the 1950 iconic motion picture Sunset Blvd. – which will be reviewed here today.

Every once and a while, a writer devises a ghost story that is not mere horror or thriller, but expands the eerie vibe to a more intimate otherworldly friendship or romance. Two of my favourites are the oddball buddy comedy Blackbeard’s Ghost (released by Disney in 1968) as well as the 1990 romantic dramedy simply titled Ghost. I now have a third excellent film to add to this rather abstract list – the 1947 motion picture The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

The horror genre has many incarnations. The two that seem to be most popular as of this point are the slasher flick (i.e. Saw) or the based-on-true-events-style ghost story – à la Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring and so on. From time to time we may see a more traditional, even Victorian-style ghost story such as Crimson Peak or The Woman in Black, but the film I am reviewing today is much harder to pigeonhole, as it is part searing psychological drama, which is then mixed with Gothic horror and a touch of thriller. It is Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 slow-burner of a picture, Don’t Look Now.

10 days: that was how long it took to film the 1963 B-movie Shock Corridor. Originally advertized as an exploitation picture (and it does have some of those elements), Samuel Fuller’s film about a journalist who has himself committed to solve a mysterious murder is so much more than its original label.