Drácula es para siempre

Editor’s note: this post is a revised and updated version of a blog post that originally appeared in 2010.

Drácula (1931). 104 min. Filmed at night on the same sets as the original Universal Dracula with Bela Lugosi. Director[s]: George Melford; Enrique Tovar Ávalos [uncredited]. Cinematography: George Robinson. With Carlos Villarías (Conde Drácula), Lupita Tovar (Eva), Barry Norton (Juan Harker), Pablo Álvarez Rubio (Renfield), Eduardo Arozamena (Van Helsing), Carmen Guerrero (Lucía Weston).

style ***1/2

substance ***

Yes, it is better (more or less)

Draculophiles are divided as to which of Universal's early Thirties vampire essays is the superior. Is it the familiar English-language classic, directed by Tod Browning, or its shadow/mirror image, the Spanish-language challenger directed by Melford/Ávalos? The latter film has developed quite a following and is no longer the novelty it once was: it’s very much available via DVD and much discussed both in scholarly and popular sources [1]. Moreover, there's even the occasional theatrical screening.

In the title role of Conde Drácula, the much maligned Carlos Villarías makes a game try, and no, he’s not Bela Lugosi (who is in this role?). But with his tall, aristocratic carriage and rather sinister features he looks the part, and - contrary to the prevailing view - at least in this writer's opinion actually does a pretty good job in the role. Villarías’s hopped up, campy performance actually improves, so to speak, with repeated viewings and fits in with the somewhat overwrought atmosphere of the film. Partisans of the original counter that Lugosi’s definitive performance is the sine qua non which overrides all other considerations, a not altogether illogical argument.

As for the supporting roles, the jury is still out. Much has been made of the women’s sexier wardrobe in the Spanish version, and no doubt the women are more provocatively attired. But their acting is also far more expressive, matching perfectly the film’s sensual, hothouse gestalt. Likewise, there’s a case for Pablo Álvarez Rubio’s hysterically intense Renfield being a match for, or possibly eclipsing, Dwight Frye’s famous turn in the role. Along the way there are a few inevitable clinkers, in casting and otherwise: the mental asylum attendant’s comic relief never really works, and nurses who wear high heels is quite the reach, even for a horror film.

It's also debatable whether the latter's greater length, by nearly one half hour, is a plus or minus. But as for style and general atmosphere it’s pretty much no contest. The English language version creaks along, looking more and more an antique as the years recede. The more fluid Spanish entry, by contrast, seems relatively modern, not only for its stylistic felicities but also its languishing, pre-Code eroticism. As the first sexy vampire film, Drácula anticipates by decades the current popularity of sexed-up vampire fiction and various other forms of paranormal erotic fiction such as werewolf, succubus, et al [2].

Desire never dies

Moreover, in its conflating of sex and vampirism, Drácula paved the way for the next two entries in the Universal vampire series which portrayed the undead in, relatively speaking, more sympathetic terms while managing to sneak in a good bit of sensuality and psychoanalysis. With Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and its homoerotic overtones, our heroine seeks release from her vampiric urges, which she refers to as an obsession. It’s tempting to view said urges as code for her ‘unnatural’ desires which are the true source of her angst [3]. Thus the title character in Daughter is both cinema’s first lesbian vampire as well as and the first neurotic vampire, and her mental state actually looks back to Eva’s conflicted feelings in Drácula.

Louise Allbritton in Son of Dracula

The next entry, Son of Dracula (1943), gives us a similarly offbeat - albeit different kind - of love story, complete with another sexy vampiress, this one with a kinky fascination for the other world and immortality. Likewise Drácula may be seen as the prototype for the more explicit Hammer lesbian vampire films of the Sixties and Seventies. Its prescience might even be seen extending as far as films like The Hunger (1983).

But, as the man said, I digress. While there's much to savor in both early Thirties Dracula's [4], for me, and for now, Viva El Drácula!  

[1] For one scholarly approach, see Robert Harland’s masterly "Quiero chpar tu sangre: a comparison of the Spanish-and English-language versions of Universal Studios' Dracula,"   Journal of Dracula Studies, v9 (2007), pp. 29-38.
[2] With its creative use of shadows and lighting effects, Drácula also may well be the first vampire noir, a trend that was followed up in subsequent vampire films like Dracula's Daughter, Mark of the Vampire, and Son of Dracula.
[3] Commentators have focused on the notorious scene in which the Countess Zaleska seduces the young model. However, an arguably more overt lesbian context occurs later in the film at Castle Dracula, where the sinister Countess has whisked away Dr. Garth’s Gal Friday Janet. In this brilliantly edited sequence, the Countess longingly and gradually bends over the helpless girl, coming ever closer as she’s about to put the (vampiric or otherwise) moves on her. Will the good doctor intervene in just the nick of time?
    Similarly, Dracula's Daughter can also been seen as the first vampire film which more or less equates vampirism with drug addiction.
[4] Right or wrong, with subsequent viewings I further appreciate how good the Spanish Drácula is and regard it as the true first Dracula film. Consequently the English-language version, for all its creepiness, seems more and more a curiosity, a filmed play, if you will, redeemed only in part by Lugosi’s matchless take on the role.

Gloria Holden in
Dracula's Daughter (1936 )

Movies I hate to love : House of Dracula (1945)

    It’s no secret that House of Dracula is a silly film which recycles tired, very tired, material. And yet – there’s something irresistible about its campy mix of goofiness and ponderousness. It’s difficult to put a finger on it but for me it’s the combination of good production values, in some cases quite good, combined with a terrible, ultra-contrived story and resultant muddled script. It’s a jangly combination to say the least. Yet despite, or perhaps because of this unwieldy witches brew, HoD has over the years garnered a mild cult following.

    Despite the title it’s really more a Wolfman story than a Dracula story. I recall that the original title was The Wolfman’s Cure. With HoD the Wolfman saga now comes full circle from the original scientific slant of the proto-Wolfman Werewolf of London a decade prior. But the performance of the torpid Lon Chaney, Jr., does the Larry Talbot character no favors. In his entrance he looks more like a mafioso garbed in black suit and white tie and sporting dyed black hair and mustache.

    The other nominal leads inhabit their roles competently if in rather somnambulist fashion. An exception in the proceedings is John Carradine’s svelte, oily voiced Count, probably the best Dracula of the post-Bela Lugosi and pre-Chrostopher Lee era (then again there weren’t many others in them years). But for me the best acting is done by Lionel Atwill in one more turn as Universal's resident police chief, and the fetching Jane Addams as the most beautiful – and most sympathetic – hunchback in cinema history. 

    But the real strength of HoD is its noirish look and creepy set design [1]. Nary a shadow, staircase or off-kilter angle is missed and it all has a wonderfully murky, echt Germanic feel to it. Most of the scenes take place at night and there’s plenty of fodder for sinister camerawork, especially in the good/bad doctor’s mansion cum castle. Especially effective is the scene of the requisite mob of villagers chasing Dr Edelmann through the streets with plenty of chiaroscuro-esque angst that would do Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari proud. 

    Alas, the special effects are not one of the production triumphs, in particular the hokey electronics light and buzzing show that was so effective in films like Bride of Frankenstein. Here they are decidedly minor league. But I do have to give a nod to the nifty dream/hallucination sequence in which among other phantasmagoric images we see a cured, statuesque Nina walking proudly and wearing what appears to be a frilly wedding gown. The Frankenstein monster appears for only a few minutes and manages to stagger a bit and smash some lab equipment before perishing in the final de rigueur fire and collapsing building.

    

I'll play if you'll sing.

Deservingly, the most famous scene and probably the best in the entire film, is where Martha O’Driscoll plays the Moonlight Sonata while the hovering, infatuated Count more or less hypnotizes her into playing something far darker and more sinister [2]. Of course she doesn’t recognize the music and has never played it before. But a crucifix serendipitously intervenes and the Count slithers away. Whether this Dracula genuinely had the hots for her or she was merely the victim of convenience – or both – is left a little unclear, as are many of the details of the inter-relationships of the characters in HoD.

    [1] Film noir’s debt to the 1930s Universal horror film has yet to receive the scholarly treatment it merits.
    [2] The sequence recalls a similar scene in Dracula's Daughter (1936), only that time the vampire played the piano. It's also a nod to a sequence in The Uninvited of a year before in which composer Ray Milland plays "Stella by Starlight" at the piano and the music takes on a darker life of its own.

Revenge noir, neo style

Parker. Starring: Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis, Nick Nolte, Patti LuPone. Directed by: Taylor Hackford. Based on the character created by Donald Westlake. Running time: 118 minutes. Summary : an unscrupulous real estate agent (Lopez) assists uber-cool tough guy Statham on his revenge quest.

style ***1/2

substance ***

pros : Lopez, Statham, LuPone, direction

cons : familiar story; murky ending; a little long

I just saw the film Parker and enjoyed it very much: it's well acted and directed, with lots of style and atmosphere. There are great on-location scenes in Ohio and, later, Palm Beach, where the film really hits its stride. 

Jason Statham makes a perfect Parker. Indeed, the character might well have been written with him in mind. He’s smart, world weary, intense, stubbly-faced (of course), and always one step ahead of his rivals, well, most of the time. Basically he's the incarnation of the likable criminal. Parker also boasts a terrific supporting cast, especially Parker's future father-in-law Nick Nolte and the Jennifer Lopez character’s slightly ditzy but appealing mother (Patti LuPone). But the real standout is Jennifer Lopez; she not only looks great but does some terrific acting as well, showing a range of emotions which often imply much more than what’s said.

One can nitpick about this or that plot problem, but Michael Curtiz-like, director Taylor Hackford keeps things flowing so well, with the tension & story twists in the foreground, that we really don’t bother to ask too many questions. Thus the film breezes along in its deceptively leisurely 118 minutes. I did wonder why Statham ended up in a Covington, Kentucky, hospital when he and his partners in crime had just committed a robbery, presumably only a few minutes prior, in Columbus, Ohio. Whatever.

The only major credibility problem I had was how Statham could choose the anorexic blonde over a smoldering real woman like Jennifer Lopez, especially after he’s seen her undressed, to say nothing of Jennifer’s heroics in putting herself in harm’s way to help him out. Moreover, Statham and Lopez simply have a lot more on-screen chemistry than Statham and Emma Booth. BTW speaking of the Jennifer Lopez character it seems she could do a lot worse than the cop so obviously besmitten with her.

Parker isn't exactly profound or original, and, truth be told, has much the patina a well produced television program. But it's one bobsled ride of a movie, intelligent, well-crafted and worthy of more critical and popular respect than it's received. In sum, Parker is a terrific slice of neo-noir served up icy cool.

La Habana noir : Lady Without Passport (1950)

I just caught this little-known (to me anyway) quasi-noir on TCM a few days ago. It’s the story of a tough but charming INS agent (John Hodiak), who is sent to bust up an illegal immigration ring in Bautista-era Cuba. Along the way he meets and falls for a mysterious WWII refugee (Hedy Lamarr), at the same time crossing swords with ever sinister bad guy George Macready. 

Lady Without Passport is on balance a fun movie : a tasty combination of romance* and film noir, done in the semi-documentary style popular in movies of the late Forties and early Fifties. It has the customary MGM gloss which tends to tone down the noir grittiness, bringing to mind The Bribe by the same studio, which also starred John Hodiak in a similar role (in that film Ava Gardner was the femme fatale; lucky John!). But MGM never had that much success with noir; perhaps the studio was just too civilized to capture the genre’s existential angst. Here the picture has the requisite gloomy look and familiar character types, but lacks the sinister undercurrent and aforementioned existential uneasiness.

Anyway there’s still much to savor in LWP. While clearly not the zenith of either Miss Lamarr’s or John Hodiak’s career, the film nonetheless has a quirky charm that makes it eminently watchable as it anticipates, by a decade, Our Man in Havana, another amiable if not quite memorable film.

Miss Lamarr is beautiful as always, but this was late in her career and she has a worse for the wear look which actually serves the character rather well. Her slinky cigarette girl costume recalls her role in White Cargo as the über jungle temptress Tandelayo (poor John Hodiak didn’t have a chance). 

Hodiak is perhaps best-known as the edgy socialist who becomes Talulah Bankead’s romantic interest in Lifeboat. In the noir context he is probably best remembered for Somewhere in the Night. His dusky looks work to his advantage in Havana as he poses as a ... Hungarian. And though not a conventional good-looking leading man there’s plenty of chemistry between him and Hedy. And of course there’s Macready, in a role similar to the character he played in Gilda, as the head of the human smuggling ring. He makes a deliciously effete villain. 

But the real star of the film is the all too fleeting on-location atmosphere in pre-Fidel Cuba, in which Havana is presented as a kind of sleepy, benign playground. The result is that it all tends to whitewash the rampant corruption that was going on. Probably the best, and most noirish scene is the racy dance number performed by Nita Bieber in a smoky mambo club -- pretty spicy stuff for the 1950s. There’s also, toward the end of the film, the novel setting of the Florida Everglades where a real jungle, with its own lethal charms, stands in for familiar noirish urban jungle. Also deserving mention is David Raksin’s jazzy Latino score.

The film is both pro INS and relatively sympathetic to the plight of the undocumented alien, giving the story an uncanny timeliness in our current political climate.

Further reading : Ruth Barton, Hedy Lamarr : the most beautiful woman in film, University of Kentucky Press, 2010, pp. 177-179.

* Then again all noirs are, at their core, romances, however offbeat.

Madame Du Barry (1934) : An undiscovered gem

Just saw this little known semi-masterpiece on the TCM channel. I can’t speak to its historical accuracy but it hardly matters; the picture is an absolute delight from start to finish. Nonetheless, some historical background : Madame Du Barry (Dolores del Rio) was a courtesan extraordinaire in Seventeenth Century France and eventual companion of King Louis XV, but alas became a victim of the guillotine during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. 

Interesting that the present film was followed only a few years later by the much more serious, even pretentious, Marie Antoinette, with the great Norma Shearer in the title role. Anyway both films have a similar look with lush costumes and sets and a certain flair for period authenticity, but there the similarity ends. Specifically, Madame Du Barry is much more a sex farce and comedy of manners than historical epic, though its broad historical outlines seem reasonably correct. 

Speaking with a French/Mexican accent, the incredibly beautiful Dolores Del Rio gives an irresistibly energetic, exuberant performance in the title role, and what’s more she seems to be having a great time immersing herself in the part. I’ve seen snippets of her films but didn’t know she was this good; she had a real flair for comedy, and to be sure, probably Madame du Barry wasn’t as madcap as Dolores’s intensely physical, manic performance implies but who can say. 

Dolores is wonderful but so is the supporting cast, especially Anita Louise as Marie Antoinette and Dorothy Tree, Helen Howell & Joan Wheeler as Louis' scheming daughters. But scene-stealing honors have to go to Reginald Owen as the befuddled King Louis XV. In Owen’s marvelously sympathetic portrayal Louis comes across as a real human being, composed of equal parts lecherous hedonist, practical - and sometimes devious - politician, and, not least of all, infatuated suitor.

Moreover, everything else in Madame Du Barry is first-rate : sets, camerawork, lighting, costumes. But the thing that breathes life into what could have been a shallow historical romp is the sparkling, pitch-perfect script which bubbles like vintage Dom Pérignon. The principals all chirp away on court gossip without ever lapsing into caricature; the actors’ rapid-fire, almost sing-song delivery is such that one expects Gilbert & Sullivan melodies to erupt any minute. It’s a fine balancing act, and the film pulls it off brilliantly. The other crucial element in the film’s success is the fine work of director William Dieterle, whose smooth, brisk style brings to mind Michael Curtiz. 

Information is unclear whether this was a Code or pre-Code movie, but in any case it’s all pretty risqué for the 1930s : lots of knowing, suggestive dialogue and bedroom scenes; Dolores flouncing about in a sheer, more or less see-through nightgown; but most of all the banquet scene which includes near-to-the-buff dancing beauties which Louis ogles with lustful approval. 

A thoroughly wonderful film. Highly recommended.

style ***

substance ***

Hell hath no fury: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne; Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne. Les Films Raoul Polquin; un film de Robert Bresson; scénario et adaptation de Robert Bresson; une production Raoul Polquin. Based on Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître by Denis Diderot. Originally released as a motion picture in 1945. Camera, Philippe Agostini; editor, Jean Feyte; music, Jean-Jacques Grünenwald; production design, Robert Lavallée. With : Maria Casarès, Paul Bernard, Elina Labourdette, Lucienne Bogaert, Jean Marchat.


   When I first saw this film about ten years ago, it blew me away and immediately went to the top of my list of the best pictures one never heard of. Happily, the film is much better known these days, with much of the credit for its increased familiarity going to the Criterion DVD release in ’03.

   The story itself is pitifully thin: a beautiful society woman plots revenge on a boyfriend who has jilted her for another woman. And for all the riches that director Bresson and cinematographer Philippe Agostini tease from such limited material, Les Dames is ultimately about atmosphere and character. Indeed, with one notable exception, discussed below, the stars of the film are its irresistible black and white look and the Paris locales [1]. Speaking of Paris, I’d be interested in the film’s production history. It was released in 1945, only a year after the Liberation, but there’s not the slightest hint of the war.

   There are good performances throughout. Though not a particularly memorable actor, Paul Bernard is competent and sympathetic as he glides through the role of the smitten playboy. Cary Grant lite, if you will. The wonderfully luminous Élina Labourdette gives an affecting performance (which includes a couple of impressive dance numbers) as the virtuous heroine with a shady past [2], her naiveté a perfect foil to the calculating malevolence of her nemesis Hélène. But ultimately the movie belongs to the incredibly intense, elegantly creepy Maria Casarès [3] as the said character Hélène. With her thick, flowing black locks, Madame Grès and Schiaparelli wardrobe (dark tones, please) [4], vampiric features (those eyes!), and the vague hint of bisexuality, she’s the very embodiment of the noir spider woman. Apparently she was a legend on the Paris stage in the Forties and Fifties but alas made few films, and we’re the poorer for it. Another note: Paul Bernard and Maria Casarès almost look enough alike to be brother and sister, which adds a subtle touch of kinky to an already perverse love story. 

   But is Les Dames film noir? Well, maybe. There’s no crime, strictly speaking, but Hélène's spiteful and malicious acts border on the criminal. Dames also has the requisite b&w look, the themes of psychosexual obsession and betrayal, and an incomparable femme fatale, all noir staples. Then again, one could just as easily describe it as a drawing room melodrama, almost a comedy of manners, done in an eminently Forties style. Indeed, in some ways the story line is not unlike one of Ernst Lubitsch's frothy comedies, except that the treatment is much darker.

   Whatever its genre, Les Dames is a terrific film, multilayered, subtle and strangely haunting, with a great cast, score and visuals. One caution: it has a very restrained, quintessentially European pacing and tone (i.e. it’s slow). Thus if your thing is explosions, car chases and action-filled high adrenaline, then better pass this one by.

style ****
substance ****

Reviews : Film Sufi ; Film Couture: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne; The Power of Resistance: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne ; Dress Inspiration: Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)


   [1] Curiously, in view of its noirish bonafides, including being the city where the term and concept originated, Paris has not been the setting for many noirs. Rififi and Touchez pas au grisbi spring to mind but few others.

   [2] It was unclear to me whether Agnés was supposed to be a former prostitute. It's not so much of a stretch actually to see the notorious dancer character as euphemism for prostitute, especially in the context of 1940s Paris.
  
   [3] She reached her cinematic zenith four years later as Death's messenger in Orphée, about as fatale a character as one can play!

   [4] Inexplicably, neither lady's contribution is mentioned in the credits.

In Les Justes of Albert Camus. Paris, Theatre Hebertot, 1949. [Photo Roger Viollet].

apolcalyptic noir: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

   [editor’s note : Kiss Me Deadly is probably the most written about of all the classic noirs*; the short list - and it is indeed a short list - of films noirs which have inspired a comparable volume of critical commentary might include Out of the Past, Double Indemnity and Touch of Evil. Thus, the rather desperate need for a raison d’etre, lest I inspire responses like : horrors! another post on Kiss Me Deadly?!! The reader’s indulgence then is humbly requested as I explore below some issues in the film which have yet to be fully discussed, in particular the cinematic Hammer’s apparent liberal bent. This posting will assume a basic knowledge of the film’s story, thus there won’t be too much in the way of plot summary. -- BCS]

  * Noir commentator Alain Silver writes that "structuralist, formalist, feminist, auteurist, and Marxist critics alike have all found something to admire in it . . . . despite these wide-ranging critical excursions, one never gets the sense that the depths of Kiss Me Deadly have been fully probed.” A good thing, since it seems everyone, this writer included, wants to have his say about KMD, especially so with the Criterion DVD release in 2011, which has inspired a flood of commentary.

Postmodern dick


“How civilized this earth used to be. But as the world becomes more primitive, its treasures become more fabulous.”

"If Kiss Me Deadly were a brand-new film, it would still be shocking in its mean spirit, its happy brutality and its audacious mix of real and surreal elements. That it was made in 1955 makes the picture all the more astonishing. Loosely based on the Mickey Spillane novel of the same name, this Robert Aldrich film is much more twisted and cynical than anything Spillane ever conceived. At its core is not just caustic humor but an uneasiness about the value of human life and the nature of the universe." - Mike La Salle, “Kiss Me Deadly Still Packs Punch”  San Francisco Chronicle 6 October 1995

   The film Kiss Me Deadly can be appreciated on at least three levels. The first is that of a traditional detective mystery with a flawed but likable [anti]-hero, femmes fatales, bad guys, ineffectual police, gunplay and a fistfight or two. The second is that of the cultural-historical, in which the film both reflects and critiques American society in the mid-1950s and the immediately preceding years. This kind of analysis usually stresses the film’s Cold War backdrop and its subversive, contrarian portrayal of American culture as dark, nasty, brutal, and selfishly materialistic, in contrast to the bland optimism and wholesome imagery put forth by official sources at the time. A third approach is simply that of cinematic aesthetics, which emphasizes things like editing and the nightmarish L. A. gothic photography. It's the second and third perspectives that have inspired all the critical huffing and puffing, and one can only wonder how much commentary there would be had the film followed the novel’s basic plot and the mysterious container been filled with drugs, and had the principal antagonists been mob thugs instead of agents of a mysterious foreign power.

   
When we first meet Mike Hammer in the film Kiss Me Deadly, we don’t know much about him except that he’s youngish, good looking, drives a sports car, wears cool clothes, and is quick with the verbal comeback. He's also cranky with the mysterious blonde Christina for almost causing him to wreck his car. But it’s the very frazzled, half-naked Christina who fills us in on some of Hammer’s character particulars. In a wonderful bit of proto-feminist analysis, she immediately pegs him as narcissistic, self-centered, immature, and a little too fond of his toys and creature comforts, observations that are all spot-on. In fact, she turns out to be the best detective in the film -- after all, she’s the one wearing the trench coat. But the most important part of this opening scene is that he gives her a lift. He also shields her from the watchful eyes of snooping authorities (but ultimately can’t save her from the bad guys). All of this may hint of a chivalrous, even sentimental streak we don’t usually associate with this character. But then again, he may just like what he sees; he has an eye for the ladies, and they for him. Whatever his motivations, Hammer’s small kindness to Christina is the doorway through which we enter the labyrinthine universe of Kiss Me Deadly, a multi-textured vision of phantasmagoric resonances, principal among them being the various shadings of the Hammer psyche.

   Foremost among this cinematic Hammer’s shadow side is the way he makes his living, something the Feds who interview him sniff out right away. His shtick is really a con game with blackmail as its currency. Hammer is, in the lingo of the time, a bedroom dick. He specializes in divorce cases, distracting compliant wives while he sics his hopelessly loyal secretary and sometimes girlfriend Velda on the husbands. And one way or another he gets the goods, allowing him to enjoy a Fifties Playboy fantasy lifestyle, a far cry from the dreary existential emptiness of a Bogart or Dick Powell only a decade prior. He has a spacious, ultra-modern bachelor pad furnished with abstract art and the latest gadgets, he drives the coolest cars, wears tailored suits, and listens to the best jazz radio stations. Velda shares in the loot; she dresses in 50s chic clothes, lives in a trendy apartment, and in her spare time studies modern dance.

   [Post]modern, nihilistic, and devoid of sentiment or sentimentality, this Hammer’s ethos is a long way from Raymond Chandler’s compassionate knight and Dashiell Hammett’s dispassionate operative. His motivation is pure mercenary self-interest; for him the payoff is literally the payoff -- how and when he gets paid. This über materialist version of the Hammer character suggests the success of novelist and Hammer creator Mickey Spillane, who laughed all the way to the bank while his critics howled. Befitting a character who’s often referred to in Neanderthalesque terms, KMD’s Hammer is a kind of missing link between the traditional gumshoe of the Forties and the James Bond figure of the swinging Sixties [1]. He’s also something of a sadist, but then again nobody’s perfect. If you ask me he’s much more of a Bond than a Philip Marlowe, and KMD - while retaining all the trappings of a detective story - has more of an espionage feel, complete with duplicitous females, aforementioned fast cars and gadgets, eminently Cold War-esque MacGuffin, and ersatz intellectual arch-villain. Because of his extra-legal style, disdain for authorities, and fondness for violence and intimidation, some commentators see in him a proto-Dirty Harry figure. In any case, it would seem that the Hammer of KMD lacks the chivalry and personal code of a Philip Marlowe -- but then again does he?

   "The Ralph Meeker character was a sleazy PI, but after his encounter with Christina, and his near-death at the hands of her killers, he is a changed man. Is it so strange that he wants to hunt down those who tried to kill him? Is he driven solely by his need to track down the The Big What’s-it? Or maybe he is haunted by Christina’s admonition to not forget her? So he slaps around a couple of guys, snaps a vinyl record, and crushes the hand of the creep at the morgue? Is he any more immoral than the Feds? Gimme a break." -- Tony D’Ambra Is Mike Hammer Really Such a Bad Guy?

Is Hammer a closet liberal?


   The Mike Hammer of the novels is politically an arch-conservative, with a generous helping of the old-fashioned vigilante thrown in for good measure. He hates liberals, gays, commies, bleeding heart judges, and all those who sympathize with them. Rather than relying on the vagaries of the American legal system, he prefers to dish out rough and ready justice to the to the well-deserving low-lifes and effete Red appeasers he comes into contact with.

 

You know you've arrived when you're
staying at the Jalisco Hotel.

 By contrast, the film version of KMD doesn’t have an overtly political agenda. Yes, Cold War paranoia is ever lurking in the shadows and the bad guys are in confederacy with some vague foreign power, but this is not a message movie [2], and, one is tempted to add, this accounts for much of its power and resonance. To wit, if KMD is a Cold War parable with a McCarthyite subtext, as it’s sometimes described, then is Hammer a victim or victimizer? It hardly matters; Hammer’s apolitical worldview even extends to conventional patriotism. Near the end of the film when he defers to the authorities it’s not out of any sense of civic duty (don’t bother waving the flag at him), it’s that he finally understands - several dead bodies later -  that he’s out of his league.

    If there is a contrarian thread running through KMD, then it’s expressed through the people Hammer hangs out with and way he relates to them. As much as anything else, it’s the positive images of women, immigrants, African-Americans and poor people, along with Hammer’s getting on with them so well, especially the folks at the jazz club, boxing gym, and auto repair shop, that gives the film much of its leftist edge. Skeptics might say that Hammer’s particular choice of friends doesn’t make him a liberal any more than his fondness for classical music, modern art and poetry does. But then again maybe it does. How many movies from the 40s and 50s can you think of where the white main character hung out at an all-black jazz club and a boxing gym with a black manager? Is it a coincidence that the only people Hammer has any chemistry with are the non-WASPs and/or the powerless and dispossessed? Hammer certainly has zero chemistry with any of society’s power elite, be they the mafia don, FBI, or effete villain-in-chief, all of whom, coincidentally, hound him with about equal vigor. Despite his trendy lifestyle, Hammer’s proletarian roots are never very far beneath the surface. 

   Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to Hammer’s treatment of women in the film, which on the whole is rather gentlemanly, thus belying his supposed misogynistic bonafides [3]. To be sure, he rebuffs their spirited advances, most notably that of said mafia don’s alcoholic, nymphomaniac half-sister, whom Hammer gently lectures on the merits of playing hard to get. All this has inspired some commentators to read into KMD a gay subtext, which seems to me wildly off the mark. This Hammer is conspicuously straight, oozing a conventional machismo which is coupled with a propensity for male violence that’s shocking even by noirish standards. Other sources have commented that he’s so obsessed with the now unreachable Christina and solving the riddle of her death that he can’t respond to other women.

   Whatever the case, and regardless of his actual ideological, or for that matter psycho-sexual leanings, based on the clues that we’re given we can infer that Hammer’s sensibilities are that of a mild progressive, especially in the context of the mid-1950s. Indeed, compared to his literary antecedent, he’s a flaming liberal. Mickey Spillane must be turning over in his grave as I pen these blasphemous words.

   And we could go on and on . . . as referenced above, writers have gone on and on. Such a great movie, and so much to say. We haven’t even talked about the mid-1950s L.A. backdrop and those creepy Bunker Hill houses; or the great supporting cast, especially Albert Dekker as Dr. Soberin, Cloris Leachman as Christina, Gaby Rodgers as Lily/Gabrielle, Paul Stewart as Carl Evello, and Maxine Cooper as Velda; or cinematographer Ernest Laszlo’s inspired work which makes Citizen Kane seem like just another movie. Speaking of which, what about KMD’s historical status? Is it the last film noir, or the first neo-noir, or maybe simply the first ‘modern’ film. Whatever the case, KMD is eerily prescient as it anticipated cinematic trends that appeared later in the decade (it was reportedly a favorite of the French New Wave directors), and moreover cautioned us on the win-at-all-costs ethos of the late Sixties, as well as the capitalist excesses, materialistic self-indulgences, and surveillance state gestalt of our own times.

    But there’s only so much bending of a reader’s ear we can do and keep a blog post within reasonable limits. Some final thoughts, however. True to the detective tradition, the convoluted story arrives at a more or less satisfying conclusion. To be sure, it all comes about extra-legally and at a horrific cost to Hammer and those around him. Was it worth it? Well, maybe and maybe not, but there weren’t a lot of good alternatives. As Bill R. writes, and please excuse the rather lengthy quote : 

    Aldrich’s Hammer is an evolving beast, a man whose ape-like savagery slowly gives way to a human confusion, grief, even regret, and a willingness to put himself in harm’s way not just in a search for answers and skulls to bust, but in an attempt to save Velda (Maxine Cooper), a woman he cares about. This is not something critics of Kiss Me Deadly tend to allow for, in their rush to condemn the film’s version of Mike Hammer as completely as they’re able to.
   Regardless, I still have to question Aldrich’s stated anti-vigilante motivation here, because where are we at film’s end? With justice, of a very bizarre and chilling sort, but it was not only not brought about by the police (if he knows so much, where was Wesley Addy’s judgmental cop when Hammer was braving nuclear fire?) but might not have occurred without Hammer. If he’d taken no action in this, the Great Whatsit would still be in the wrong hands, the same greed and betrayal would still fire the cylinders of a certain dumb psychotic blonde - a woman not entirely unlike Hammer, minus his sudden burst of self-awareness - and Hammer’s cop friends would still be sitting around with their thumbs up their asses. Dumb sadistic ape he may be, but at least Mike Hammer took his shot. The Great WhatsIt

   Reportedly director Robert Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides wanted to create in Hammer a greedy, opportunistic, out-of-control thug. For roughly the first half of the film this is pretty much what they got, but as the story progressed, in spite of themselves, it would seem, they ended up with something closer to a knight.


style ****
substance ****

Trivia

Gaby Rodgers was a girlhood friend of Anne Frank.
Maxine Cooper also appeared in three TV detective series: Philip Marlowe, Peter Gunn, 
    and Richard Diamond, Private Detective
 

 

 

  [1] Another fictional character often cited as a transitional figure was TV’s 1950s private detective Peter Gunn, who had many similarities to the KMD Hammer except that he was smarter, smoother, and far less inclined to violence.
 
  [2] KMD’s leftist slant is expressed in both socio-economic as well as racial terms. It can’t be any accident that in this film the black and ethnic characters are cool and sympathetic, while everybody else (i.e. the White power elite) is nasty, sleazy, corrupt and decidedly un-hip, and this would include even marginal members of the dominant class, most conspicuously the ethically challenged Hammer and Velda. In fact, aside from Christina, who disappears from the movie early on, Hammer and Velda are the only white folks in KMD worth rooting for, and even in their cases we have our doubts. On the other hand, if there’s a topical political message to KMD, then it’s got to be the dangers of nuclear radiation, but then again this same message could apply to half the movies made in the 1950s, so no points here.

   [3] In this incarnation Hammer is supposedly a self centered sadist worried about little else than getting paid, preserving his sweet lifestyle and satisfying his criminal impulses. Yet throughout the film he’s pushing away the very women who come onto him, and at the same time putting himself in harm’s way to help them out, even when he’s under no obligation to do so.
   In the one miscalculation in her otherwise brilliant analysis of Hammer’s psyche, Christina comments that he’s the kind of man who never gives in a relationship, only takes. But in a perverse irony, throughout the film Hammer does little but give to Christina, through his obsession of her memory and his desire to atone for her death. His apparently opportunistic quest for a big payoff may in fact be more of a penance; his  fascination with her is due to his feelings of responsibility for, if not exactly causing her death, then in not sufficiently protecting her from her abductors and eventual assassins.
    Hammer's chivalry is misplaced only once, with the psychotic femme fatale Lily Carver, who in any case is eventually dispatched, not by Hammer, but by the radioactive flames which consume her as we watch with grim approval. Lily's violent demise notwithstanding, the gentlemanly side of Hammer is further reinforced in that his slapping and other rough tactics are reserved only for the men in KMD, most of whom have it coming.

   Much has been made of the four principal women characters as not being very sexy, a fair enough comment. But maybe this is a nod to their modern-ness. These women are capable, strong, independent and eminently practical; they don’t have to depend upon the old fashioned wiles of an Ava Gardner or Jane Greer. To wit, Velda sweats a lot, another thing a traditional noir temptress doesn’t do, on-screen anyway. Speaking of Velda, yes, Hammer pimps her out to seduce husbands to get the goods in his sleazy divorce cases, but we get the impression that Velda isn't overly thrilled about her role as Hammer's all-too-convenient femme fatale of choice.

   The only other female character of note (not counting the cheesecake beauties who appear in the swimming pool scene) is the exquisite Mady Comfort, who appears as the torch singer at the blues club. Arguably the most beautiful woman in the film, she only appears for a minute or two, though sometimes in the background we hear her singing the film’s unofficial theme song, “I’d Rather Have the Blues Than What I’ve Got.” (I like her rendition better than Nat King Cole’s). She’s a black woman, but the supposedly reactionary, misogynistic Mike Hammer treats her with as much, perhaps more, respect than any other woman in the picture, another reminder that all is often not what is seems in KMD.