Stormy Weather

The fourth and final movie made starring power couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the film noir crime drama Key Largo (1948) was co-adapted and directed by John Huston (The Misfits; The Asphalt Jungle), adapted from Maxwell Anderson’s Broadway play of the same name – something very noticeable with it basically being set in one non-moving location until the climax. Set on the titular island in Florida, army veteran Frank McCloud (Bogart – Dark Passage; The Harder They Fall) finally arrives at Hotel Largo to visit wheelchair bound James Temple (Lionel Barrymore – It’s a Wonderful Life; Grand Hotel) and the man’s daughter-in-law Nora (Bacall – Dark Passage; Misery) – James’s son, Nora’s husband, was under McCloud’s command when he died serving in Italy during World War II.

In 1955, Frank Sinatra used to sing that “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage”, though the film noir today, titled Woman on the Run, which was released five years earlier in 1950, takes a wholly different look at the topic... centred upon an up and down, topsy turvy roller coaster ride of a relationship – which, of course, has its climax ending at an amusement park that, you guessed it, features a roller coaster. It only seems fitting then that one of its screen writers, Alan Campbell, had his own tumultuous relationship with his wife Dorothy Parker (they formed a popular writing team together), while the feature’s director, Norman Foster (Kiss the Blood Off my Hands; and a protégé of Orson Welles), also had his fair share of problems when he married Claudette Colbert... in other words, two complicated relationships that probably influenced this movie and its themes.

Taking years as he reveled in the eccentric, outlandish neo-noir mystery thriller landscape he was writing, David Lynch then went on to direct his violent, erotic, drug infused crime caper, calling it Blue Velvet (1986) – with the 1963 song of the same name sung by Bobby Vinton being a big influence on the picture. Though set in the time it was made, the suburban Lumberton feels like it is stuck in the 1950s. Airing a vibe that is more than a touch off-putting, there is no semblance of things being in the right – all seemingly out of time and place. The billboards resemble another era, most of the cars are thirty years old, and lounge singers are popular again.

If you’re looking for one of the most wildly intense nights of chaos set on film, then Airport (1970), co-written and directed by George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) is in the running for that honour. Often deemed a disaster movie with plenty of drama, moments of action, tinges of comedy (see above), as well as some obvious thrills, it’s a mixed bag of sorts, as it’s got an impressively massive cast, clever use of split screen to keep the narrative moving along (it might remind some of the popular 2000s tv show 24), and throw a wild number of ideas at the screen to create one frantic evening effect, yet its languid pacing holds some of these elements back from being a more memorable disaster thriller. In fact, star Burt Lancaster even called it “a piece of junk”.

Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, back in 1976, Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader, before becoming household names (that would happen later the very same year with De Palma’s Carrie and Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver), attended a screening of an original print of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), and were immediately inspired to co-write a story (with the latter polishing off the screenplay) for a movie that would eventually be titled Obsession – not at all related to this year’s box office craze with the same title, or the review posted here last week called Obsession: A Taste for Fear (1987). Like much of De Palma’s work, this too finds its brainchild from Hitchcock’s oeuvre, as mentioned before, most notably Vertigo.

Made for a very, very reasonable budget of only three million dollars, co-writer and director Scott Mann’s Fall (2022) became not only a minor box office success, grossing just over eighteen million dollars, but is also a film that is not for anyone who might be suffering from acrophobia – also known as a fear of heights. Following twenty-something Becky Connor (Grace Caroline Currey), she was an avid rock climber until the day her husband Dan (Mason Gooding) fell to his death while on one of their climbing trips with fellow enthusiast Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner).