On Dames and Dark Cities
They called me a femme fatale in the media, back when that Jesse Black fiasco went down. Most people have no idea what it really means. Most people think it means badass with tits, but that’s not it at all. A real femme fatale is a villain, and I always thought of myself as a hero. At least I tried to be.
Turned out they were right.
That’s the opening of my new novel THE GET OFF. It’s the last in the Angel Dare series and represents the end of an era. For her and for me. Telling her story has been a significant and transformative part of my life for more than a decade. It’s the thing that defined me, the thing that I was and am the most proud of.
It’s also in the rearview mirror now. Which leaves me feeling a little bit melancholy but also very excited to see what kinda trouble I can get into next.
By some cosmic coincidence, the theme of this year’s Noir City Festival is “femmes who made Film Noir fatale.” It’s a dynamite lineup of flicks that highlight the genre’s top actresses, many of whom are also featured in the new, expanded edition of Dark City Dames by Eddie Muller.
I already had a head full of thoughts about femmes and female protagonists. About the way the women in noir flicks leaned into femme-phobic tropes while also subverting them in subtle and surprising ways. About what it really means to be a Strong Female Character and about my own complex, ever-evolving relationship with gender.
If I’ve learned anything about myself in my 50+ years on this planet it’s that my fundamental nature is mutable and constantly evolving. I’ve found that I’m no longer interested in doing High Femme drag. I regret nothing and loved every minute of that iteration of myself, but menopause feels like a second, more complicated puberty and I’m leaning the fuck into it. I’m exploring androgyny and gender-fluidity. Shedding my skin, growing and changing and figuring out who I want to be next. Feeling less femme, but just as fatal.
That being said, my love for classic Film Noir remains as strong as ever, as does my obsession with hunting down and watching every single flick in the genre. Not to mention all those indefinable hybrids lurking around the outskirts.
And let me tell you, I’ve seen a fucking lot. After all, I’ve been attending and writing up the Noir City festivals for 20 years. Mostly in Hollywood, but also in San Francisco and Seattle. I saw interviews with legendary actors and directors who are no longer with us. I made lifelong friends in that audience. I was in the Egyptian theater watching Black Gravel the night before it got shut down due to Covid and I covered virtual versions of the festival during lockdown. Like Roy Batty, I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
But Roy will also tell you that nothing lasts. Nothing stays the same forever. It’s not just me, the world around us is changing faster than we can process. Everything feels uncertain, in small personal ways and in huge, life changing ways.
One of those profound and seemingly irreversible changes is the way people choose to experience movies. The entire concept of entertainment has been deeply fragmented, algorithmically personalized, twisted by parasocial fandom and truncated to fit our ever-shrinking attention spans. The old school experience of watching a projected 35mm film with a live audience in a darkened, silent theater feels as amusingly quaint and insufferably impractical as an Amish buggy.
I’ll admit, I struggle against the modern siren song of convenience and comfort as much as anybody. I will never understand the appeal of watching movies on a tiny screen like a phone or tablet, but I do like being able to watch them on my ginormous TV with my dog on my lap. I like being able to pause to empty my cranky, menopausal bladder. I like being able to watch whenever I have free time and not having to adjust my hectic schedule to accommodate set showtimes. I like not having to worry that my chronic ear issue will interfere with my ability to participate and I like being able to have subtitles turned on so I don’t have to wear my hearing aids. I especially like not having to factor in a long commute or stay out far past my embarrassingly early bedtime.
But I also love that buggy ride. And while I no longer have the physical stamina to do multiple back-to-back late night double (and occasional triple) features, I never want to give that experience up completely. So I’m finding ways to embrace change without jettisoning the things I love most.
With that in mind here I am, indulging in another mashup combo of the live, in-person festival with Noir City: The Home Game. And, as always, I’ll be providing you wonderful people out there in the dark with my usual smart-ass, lowbrow, not-exactly-ringside coverage. (Albeit in this spanking new newsletter format.)
First, the live action:
Before I get into it, I feel obligated to mention the technical difficulties that impacted this year’s festival. The first night’s double bill was cancelled due to sound issues, and then projector problems during a failed re-screening necessitated a pivot to digital for the duration of the line up. Except for MY TRUE STORY, which wound up being shown using a single projector with breaks for reel changes.
Having survived similar problems during the Hollywood screening of SUDDENLY, I guess I’m a little more forgiving than most about issues like this. I get that the appeal of 35mm prints is a big draw, but I also know that shit can and will happen and try to cut the organizers some slack knowing how hard they work on these events. As always, your millage may vary.
Anyway, there were no problems with THE LONG WAIT.
Seriously, how have I lived my whole life up until this point without seeing this wild, bonkers and deliriously kinky movie?
I’m not even going to bother summarizing the unhinged amnesia and plastic surgery plot because none of that matters. What matters is bondage. It’s like somebody opened my skull and shot this amazing sequence inside my brain.
Anybody who knows me even a little knows how much I love predicament bondage. I can’t get enough of scenes where a captive has to squirm their way across the floor to get to some kind of goal, like a phone to call for help or a knife to cut the rope.
In THE LONG WAIT, the sexy, barefoot (!!!) captive’s goal is to kiss the other, also bound captive, all the while being taunted and tormented by their smug, smirking captor, inexplicably named Servo.
The rest of the flick may have been so-so at best but as far as I’m concerned this is officially the best movie ever made. Full fucking stop.
A few other details worth mentioning.
This is a Mickey Spillane deal, so there are plenty of tough-talking sex-kittens, hot-tempered fisticuffs and high-octane, hypermasculine posturing.
The plot revolves around our amnesia-stricken hero making out with various blondes to determine which one is really his missing girlfriend. Anthony Quinn’s blunt-force kissing technique is, as described by host Vince Keenan, “alarming,” but he certainly does make for a dark, brooding and perfectly Hammer-esque anti-hero.
Mistress Christa says check it out!
Next, the Home Game flick in this match up: MY TRUE STORY.
MY TRUE STORY is a gender-flipped version of a classic noir trope. A paroled jewel thief is fresh outta the joint and determined to stay clean but winds up getting pulled back into the game by forces beyond their control. We’ve all seen this story told a hundred different ways, but what makes this one unusual, for the time anyway, is that the thief is a woman.
The ex-con in question gets set up with a job as a companion to rich elderly lady by a conniving crime boss who wants to get his hands on something more valuable than gold. A proprietary compound called “oil of myrrh,” the key ingredient in a popular luxury perfume. (Real myrrh isn’t particularly rare or valuable, but that’s clearly not the point so just go along with it, will ya?)
This flick is directed by Mickey Rooney (!) and features baby Aldo Ray in his very first role (billed as Aldo Da Re) but it’s the hard-drinking, whiskey-voiced Helen Walker, best known to Noiristas for her role as the icy psychiatrist in NIGHTMARE ALLEY, who added a poignant kind of meta sadness to an otherwise forgettable B picture. Walker lived a tragic and noirish life that probably colors my perception of this otherwise mediocre flick. She was behind the wheel in a drunk driving accident that killed a young soldier and left her shattered both physically and mentally. She never really pulled out of that downward spiral and, after blowing up multiple marriages and losing everything in a house fire, she died broke and alone at 47. This was one of her last films, along with a small role in another Noir City fave THE BIG COMBO.
What’s interesting about these two flicks as a double bill is that they fall on far opposite ends of the gender spectrum. LONG WAIT is about as over-the-top masculine as a film can be without showing uncensored penetration, while MY TRUE STORY is all domestic subterfuge, betrayal and feminine melodrama with a focus on intimate, familial and primarily female relationships.
Neither of these two film are particularly good, but both are worth watching, if for totally different reasons.
As for the rest of this year’s line up, because I’ve been doing this so long I’ve not only seen all of the other films, I’ve also written most of them up already. So for you three hardcore motherfuckers who are still reading at this point, (hi, mom!) here’s some quickfire reviews of the films I don’t seem to have written up yet, followed by a roundup of links to old reviews of the rest of the flicks.
The Sleeping City
Docu-Drama Dope Noir, filmed on location in Bellevue Hospital. Which was where I, as a kid in NYC, was told I would end up if I didn’t behave.
Hell’s Half Acre
Tiki Noir with unforgettable female characters, written by Steve “I WAKE UP SCREAMING” Fisher.
Murder My Sweet
“Cute as lace pants.”
Chandler’s legendary private eye Phillip Marlowe is hired to track down an ex-con’s missing girlfriend and gets mixed up with hot jade, duplicitous dames and murder. This is a must-watch classic of the genre that I’ve probably seen a dozen times or more.
Ace in the Hole
Bitter, cynical and pitch black, this flick’s acerbic critique of the bloodthirsty news media remains as relevant as ever.
The Killing
Look, I’m positive I’ve written this flick up, more than once even, but those ancient stone tablets are lost in the cyberhaze of The Before Times Internet. Forget all that though, because this movie is fucking superb and if you haven’t seen it you need to remedy that shit, pronto. I mean come on. Stanley Kubrick! Sterling Hayden! Marie Windsor! Timothy Fucking Carey!
Need I say more?
As for the rest of this year’s line up, here’s a Big Moby Link Round Up of my write ups from previous years:
Still here? Still reading? Damn, I’m impressed. Anyway thanks for sticking with me on yet another trip down the mean streets of Noir City. And if you love these flicks as much as I do, please consider donating to the Film Noir Foundation so that they can continue their great work restoring and preserving America’s Noir heritage.
Like Eddie always says, see you in the shadows.