I recently purchased Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 3 by warner brothers. This was one of those box sets that had been sitting in my Amazon cart and was discounted significantly, enough so to convince me to pull the trigger on the purchase. This particular set was pretty sweet, with 5 films and a documentary on film noir. The films included are His Kind of Woman, Lady in the lake, On Dangerous Ground, The Racket, and Border Incident. I already had VHS copies of 4 of these (all but Border Incident) but these copies were taped of TCM.
I am a huge fan of film noir, but that is probably a post for another day, since it will be lengthier. His Kind of Woman is an interesting noir flick, because while it has a twisting storyline and contains a man (Robert Mitchum) who is caught up in a plot that he is trying to figure out. However, this flick also contains 3 singing performances (all by the great Jane Russell), and tremendous comedic relief via the tremendous performance by Vincent Price(?!) If the only Vincent Price you know if from his horror days (or worse yet, that 2 part episode of the Brady Bunch), you absolutely need to see this movie. Other notable actors include Jim Backus (aka Winston Howell III on Gilligan's Island) and Raymond Burr.
A good sign of an accesible film noir is that my wife thoroughly enjoyed it as well. That means the film has some noirish elements but isn't very hard-edged and nasty, lacking that bitter cynicism that a noir freak like me truly enjoys.
I generally don't like to rehash the plot of my reviewed movies because you can find that many other places (Rotten Tomatos.com or IMDB are two good starts). I can only say that as a pretty seasoned film watcher with solid, quality taste, this is a much see film.
No comments:
Post a Comment