Re: DARK CITY second edition: by the numbers
Posted by Carl on 8/6/2021, 4:56 pm, in reply to "DARK CITY second edition: by the numbers"
Edited by Carl on 8/6/2021, 4:59 pm

Interesting note about Decoy ... these omissions seem to occur in virtually every noir compendium I've read. The Rough Guide to Film Noir, an otherwise handy little book that also does a decent roundup neo-noir, totally overlooks The Narrow Margin. Not word one.

Then there's The Directors, a very solid book by Silver/Ursini that doesn't miss any of the key noir directors, even most of the second-tier ones ... whoops, except Phil Karlson. Read this book and you'd never know Karlson existed. That's a big swing-and-miss for me. He's not Robert Siodmak but he did direct Kansas City Confidential, 99 River Street, Tight Spot, Scandal Sheet, The Phenix City Story and The Brothers Rico, among others. That's a pretty significant slice of noir to dismiss outright.
I haven't picked up the second edition yet. I went by the Books Inc. in Alameda yesterday (where Eddie lives) thinking they might actually some autographed copies of the new one lying around considering its his hometown bookstore.

They didn't even have the book! Sheesh!

Re: DARK CITY second edition: by the numbers
Posted by Don Malcolm on 8/6/2021, 7:58 pm, in reply to "Re: DARK CITY second edition: by the numbers"

Of course the difference is that those other authors are not also prolific film festival programmers who've actually screened the omitted film in question at least 4-6 times over the years...

...but it should be noted that DECOY has not been screened on Noir Alley thus far, either (with a film count up over 170 at this point).

NOTE: DECOY was subsequently screened on Noir Alley on 12/22/2022...

Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet...MIA in DARK CITY 2
Posted by Don Malcolm on 8/8/2021, 9:10 am, in reply to "Re: DARK CITY second edition: by the numbers"

Just to make this more perplexing, here is Eddie on DECOY (excerpted from a recent interview article by Nora Fiore aka The Nitrate Diva) in which he picks ten favorite “B” noirs:

Decoy (Jack Bernhard, 1946)

EM: Speaking of extraordinary female protagonists! Jean Gillie gives Ann Savage a run for her money as the meanest woman in the history of movies. Decoy is a picture that... either I get that thing on Noir Alley in 2022 or I quit! Because I am determined to get that movie seen by more people. It’s just insane. It’s a completely berserk movie.

Jack Bernhard, the director, and Gillie were married. He was a pilot and they met in England during the war. He brought her to Hollywood and this is one of the few films that she made. He directed another film that I really like, The Hunted with Preston Foster and Belita. Those are the two really good noir films on his resume.

If people are unfamiliar with Decoy, all I will say about it is the plot. There’s a gang of criminals and the loot from their heist has been buried, but nobody has the map to where the money is except this guy on death row who’s about to be executed. They have devised a way to resuscitate this man post-execution so that he can lead them to the money.

I’ve shown this film with Stanley Rubin, who wrote the script. Stanley would go on to become a very successful producer. He produced The Narrow Margin. But this is when he was starting out and Decoy was one of his first films. And he had such a good sense of humor about himself and his career that when I said, “Stanley, we want you to be our guest. We’re showing Decoy, he was like, “Oh my God! You’re going to show that film?” But he appreciated how great Jean Gillie is in that movie. What a shame that she died so young.

Imagine if they had made a film in which Lawrence Tierney’s character in Devil Thumbs a Ride meets Jean Gillie’s character in Decoy and they go on a crime spree together. That would be unreal. Not gonna see that, but we can dream.”

All well and good, then, but...if it’s still a stellar B deserving of a slot on Noir Alley, why the heck is it not getting any ink in the new edition of DARK CITY, the “revised & expanded edition” devised precisely to showcase films like it?

Well, at least now we know: it was a brain cramp.

A good way to compensate for that, of course, would be to start programming it again, specifically in the next in-person festival (which is supposed to be in DC this October).

One last thought: the movie Eddie projects as a great pairing of deranged lead characters (Jean Gillie and Lawrence Tierney) already happened. It’s called BORN TO KILL, with Tierney and a truly great actress (Claire Trevor) and its overall combination of characters provides depravity across the spectrum, from the low to the high and to all points in between, thus providing a lurid richness that easily outshines any possible coupling of merely caricatured evil.

Re: Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet…MIA in DARK CITY 2
Posted by Carl on 8/8/2021, 2:47 pm, in reply to "Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet...MIA in DARK CITY 2"

Detour and Decoy would seem one of the most logical pairings ever, two bargain basement B films, both one-word titles starting with "De" one made in 45 and the other in 46, both featuring outrageous female characters and a lot of the action taking place in automobiles. Now if they only could have had Sheldon Leonard or Esther Howard in both films ....

Who wins a cage match between Margot and Vera? Tough call.

Re: Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet...MIA in DARK CITY 2
Posted by Dan in the MWUser icon on 8/11/2021, 7:03 am, in reply to "Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet...MIA in DARK CITY 2 "

Let's not be so quick to dismiss Jack Bernhard as "B" director of gritty film noir movies. In addition to "Decoy" and "The Hunted," he was responsible for "Blonde Ice" and "Violence."

"Blonde Ice" is familiar to many of us. It is about a social climbing newspaper columnist who is willing to murder her way to the top. "Violence" is not as well known, but it reunited Bernhard with Stanley Rubin. It is an antifascist tract, produced before the focus of political themed movies shifted to the Red Menace. A group of crooks use a veterans' organization to plot their political advancement while bilking their members and using violence to enforce their policies. It is a quickie from Monogram Pictures.

Re: Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet…MIA in DARK CITY 2
Posted by Don Malcolm on 8/11/2021, 5:49 pm, in reply to "Re: Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet...MIA in DARK CITY 2"

Dan, I think all of Bernhard's films are clearly "B's," and the quote from Eddie indicates his preference for DECOY and THE HUNTED without providing any additional opinion/analysis or useful biographical info. (There's even less in the second edition, only an approving mention of Bernhard's direction of THE HUNTED without any reference to the other three films we're referencing.) BLONDE ICE was one of just two films produced by Martin Mooney Productions (Mooney was previously involved with PRC, but got the boot when Eagle-Lion came in and bought their facilities) and there are strong whispers that Edgar Ulmer was involved in the script. Plus it has George Robinson of the Universal "B" horror unit behind the camera.

BLONDE ICE really should be screened in conjunction with SHAKEDOWN.

VIOLENCE's genesis at Monogram links Bernhard back to his father, Jeffrey Bernerd, a British producer (Stoll Pictures; some sources claim he was also associated with British Gaumont) who relocated to Hollywood in 1940 and wound up with a production unit at Monogram (teaming with Kay Francis on her troika of noir-exploitation quickies in 1944-46). The connective tissue between father and son is tenuous and hard to trace, since they apparently did not work together at all. Jeffrey Bernerd died in 1950 and his son never made another movie--another mysterious oddity that has yet to be clarified. There are references to Bernhard directing plays at the Pasadena Playhouse in the mid-1950s, but the trail goes cold at that point, and the last forty years of his life remain a mystery...

Link to Jay Fenton's piece [hidden in plain sight on a side page of the Blackboard] about BLONDE ICE
Posted by Don Malcolm on 8/13/2021, 3:31 pm, in reply to "Re: Eddie recently on DECOY—and yet...MIA in DARK CITY 2"

The reason BLONDE ICE is familiar to many of the ongoing participants at the Board is that back in 2005, when Dark Marc Dolezal was actively involved in creating extra content, film historian and restorationist Jay Fenton wrote an essay about his original work to rescue BLONDE ICE, which was posted as a separate sub-page on noirfilm.com, which is now a moribund site containing the remants of Marc's efforts to create a more "full-service" discussion/information source for film noir.

You can access it at this link:

http://www.noirfilm.com/Blonde_Ice.htm

IIRC, Jay's commentary track is on the original VCI DVD release.