Mark clearly had an affinity for films with more testosterone, and it seemed to add crispness to his writing whenever he encountered them, even if the film didn't quite rise to the occasion.
And the 50s was definitely a decade where American noir amped up its presentation of masculinity (as Mark will address more directly in a later blog entry), so it's not surprising that nearly two-thirds of his blog entries at WHERE DANGER LIVES dealt with films made from 1950 on. We're about a third of the way through his 50 output at this point.
I actually think James Ellroy originally copped his style from Spillane, then took it into ever-more-outré directions. I wish Ellroy would write a book where Mike Hammer and Mickey Spillane are both flesh-and-blood characters--and the final scene is where they have a showdown. If Spillane kills Hammer, will they both keel over at the same time?? :-)
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