Stealers Wheel

A film noir with some eccentricities, The Big Steal (1949), directed by then third time film maker Don Siegel (who would go on to make such greats as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz), plays like a long chase within a longer chase, while the meeting between gent and femme is something akin to a will they/won’t they screwball comedy. The usually laconic Lt. Duke Halliday (Robert Mitchum) is in quite the conundrum, as he has been robbed of a U.S. Army payroll totaling a whopping three hundred grand by swindler Jim Fiske (Patric Knowles). On the lam in Mexico (a rather rare noir location, also think Ride the Pink Horse and Touch of Evil), Halliday is on his trail... but the problem is, so is his superior – Captain Vincent Blake (William Bendix), who, of course, thinks it was actually the Lieutenant who ran off with the money.

Looking for the easy way out... it’s often a motif of the film noir. Taking the idea to its seemingly inevitable conclusion, director Anthony Mann (Desperate) definitely drives the concept down what seems to be every Side Street (1949) in The Big Apple in this tale of go on, take the money and run. Joe Norson (Farley Granger) is anticipating the birth of his first child with wife Ellen Norson (Cathy O’Donnell). The acting pair grace the screen together for the second and final time following They Live by Night from the previous year... funnily enough, it almost plays as a ‘what could have been’ second chance for that couple.

If jailed for false pretenses, when you finally get out of prison, what would you do? The premise of the engaging film noir thriller Cry Danger (1951), made by former child star and first time director Robert Parrish (it is also said Dick Powell was quite involved in the film’s directing), one thing’s for sure, it’s about as hard boiled as you can get. Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet) plays understandably rough around the edges Rocky Mulloy – a man who was falsely fingered in an armed robbery case that led to a murder.

Beating the famed comedy duo of Abbott and Costello to the horror comedy circuit both one and two years prior to their 1941 classic Hold That Ghost, Bob Hope released The Cat and the Canary in 1939, following it up in quick succession (just eight months later) with The Ghost Breakers in 1940 – it was originally a play written by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard (there are also two silent films from 1914 and 1922 based on it that are thought to be lost – the former being directed by Cecil B. DeMille). Directed by George Marshall, the mystery infused horror comedy follows a socialite, Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard), who has learned on a stormy New York night that she has inherited a supposedly haunted castle on a secluded Cuban isle ominously named Black.

A rush job of a film, the slasher mystery thriller Schizoid (1980) came about when writer and director David Paulsen bumped into the film’s producer, Menahem Golan, asking him if he’s got any good ideas. Coming up with something for the next day, he was given a measly two weeks to polish off a script, and a few more weeks before it went into production... the only other stipulation, there’s got to be a starring part for Klaus Kinski. Not usually a recipe for success, it is immediately evident that this is guerilla film making at its most rushed. But, at the same time, something rather interesting happened – a cast came together that makes this murder mystery a bit more complex... more on that a little bit later.

It all started with X – an ode to the 1970s early slasher movies; then, it was followed up by prequel Pearl – a horror flashback paying tribute to the early days of colour cinema; and it all concludes (supposedly) with MaXXXine (2024) – which leaps into 1985... following survivor of the original, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), as she navigates Los Angeles – attempting to make it in the cutthroat world of show business. One of the more unique trilogies in cinema history, writer/director Ti West’s conclusion is not complex in its narrative... if you’ve been in tune with the films from the very beginning, it will likely not be too difficult to guess where it’s all leading to, but it is utterly impressive in its cinematic dialogue – in other words, how it pulls its inspiration from the history of the industry to create a striking pastiche of the 80s era.