In scouring the lists for British Crime Films, I was able to come up with "Serena"(1962), a nifty "Laura" knockoff that relies on expository dialogue. "Howard Rogers" (Emrys Jones) is an artist who's making out with his model as the movie opens. He's estranged from his wife "Ann" (Honor Blackman), and when the model goes home, Howard is visited by an "Inspector Gregory" (Patrick Holt) from Scotland Yard, who inquires of his whereabouts that afternoon. "I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, but your wife was found dead. It appears she's been murdered", the Inspector intones flatly.
Howard's got an alibi, and in fact he's got two. One is his model, the other is his gun club. Yes, he's a firearms enthusiast, but no, he didn't kill his wife. Other members of the gun club can confirm his presence.
A great line of dialogue must be noted : "Isn't it rather unusual for an artist to be interested in guns"? - The Inspector.
But it appears Mr. Rogers is telling the truth. He cooperates with The Yard in every way. The Inspector then asks him to come along to the morgue. "I apologize again, but we need you to identify the body". While looking it over, Rogers notes a missing detail. "This can't be my wife! She had a birthmark on her left leg".
The Inspector then drives Rogers back to his studio. He's feeling good, knowing his wife must still be alive, and when they enter, there she is, waiting for Howard in the flesh. Now the question becomes "who, then, is the dead woman, and what was she doing at Ann's house"?
Ann Rogers thinks she knows. Though the woman's face has been obliterated by a shotgun blast (sorry for the graphic detail, but I didn't write the doggone thing), thus making identification difficult, she was wearing Ann's clothes when she died. "I have to confess, she's a friend of mine. Her name is Claire Matthews. Howard knew her too, she was one of his models. I had asked Claire to stay with me and indeed to impersonate me, to follow Howard around dressed as me, because I wanted him back".
I must step in to opine that this bit of plotting is convoluted, and a clearer explanation is best left to Inspector Gregory in the movie.
Suffice it to say that Ann's friend Claire appears to be the dead woman. As for who killed her, the Inspector suspects the model that Howard was making love to at the beginning of the movie. Her name is "Serena Vaughan". We never see her, so there's no acting credit to display, but the Inspector thinks that Serena, eager to marry Howard, wanted to kill his wife to get her out of the way. Only instead of shooting Ann, she got the wrong woman - Claire Matthews - who was doubling for Ann in a ruse.
It's good stuff, very Sherlock Holmesian - Holt is exceptional as the all-business Inspector - and a monkey wrench is thrown into the works when Ann's lawyer shows up. He'd originally gotten the call when it appeared she was dead. Now he's consulting with Howard and the police on how to disperse her will. It seems Ann was a very wealthy woman......or still is......or something. And what happened to Serena Vaughn? She's disappeared from the Earth.
As I say, "Serena" is written with a nod to "Laura", one of the all-time great Film Noirs starring Gene Tierney in the title role, as a woman who goes missing and is presumed dead. "Serena" even has a jazzy, romantic theme that recurs throughout the movie, just like Laura's theme did in that film. It's not as well developed as "Laura", nor does it have the same production values (it's an hour-long programmer rather than a first feature), but the use of exposition is quite clever, as delivered by Inspector Gregory and his assistant "Sergeant Conway" (Bruce Beeby).
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Serena". ////
The previous night we watched an excellent American crime film from director William Witney, one of Tarantino's favorite filmmakers. We saw Witney's work about a month ago in "The Cat Burglar", and he's quite good, especially as a technician. In that sense he has the skills of an A-list director. He's not bad with his actors either, considering that they're all B-grade (call them B-minus), and I think it's here, in films like this, where Tarantino gets his inspiration for urgent, stilted dialogue, in which characters speak lines they'd never say if a screenwriter hadn't written them down. QT took this kind of over-literate dialogue to the max in "Pulp Fiction", but it's clear he got it from his directorial heroes, like Witney, who weren't trying to be ironic but only to make the best film from their available budget and talent.
I must jump in to say "God save us from ironic filmmakers and artists of all kinds. Thank You, God".
Well anyhow, "Harold Norton" (Ben Cooper) is a young man who lives and works at a Studio City motel owned by his mother. As the movie opens, he's catering to "Lynn Novak" (Marla English), a voluptuous woman about his own age who's just gotten out of the swimming pool. Lynn asks Harold to towel her off. She's sultry, there's innuendo in her voice and she's up to something, playing Harold in some way because he's innocent and clean cut.
His mother intervenes. "Stop mooning over that actress and get up there and clean room 19".
Harold protests : "She's not an actress, Mom, she's a nightclub singer".
"Oh really? Well that's even worse", says Ma, who really thinks Lynn is a prostitute.
Soon enough, two men arrive, supposedly members of Lynn's "jazz band". In reality they're hoodlums who are planning an armored car robbery. There was to be a third man in the group, but he got busted on their way to California and is locked up somewhere in the Midwest. He'll become a red herring later on, but for now he's a threat, because the other two guys are driving his car, which connects them to a felon.
Harold notices this when he valet parks the car for the "band members". He's got a crush on Lynn, and asks her if she knows the car is hot. "The registration's in another man's name". Of course she's aware of this but can't tell Harold, because her partners have noticed that Harold's a hot rodder, a fast car aficionado, and they're planning to use him as a getaway driver when the Brink's job is done. Completing the plan is the Brink's driver himself. He knows the crooks and is in it for half the take.
The job is pulled, it goes off well, until Harold is pulled over for speeding. The crooks got more than they bargained for by forcing him to be their driver. He exceeds 110mph in the escape, and now the motorcycle cop has other news : "Are you Harold Norton? Your mother has put out a missing persons report on you (he's a minor) and I've gotta take you in".
The crooks are in the back seat, playing non-chalant, but when the cop tells Harold to follow him back to the station, "Al Kutner" (Jan Merlin) - the head honcho - speaks up. "Excuse me, Officer? I'm thinking we'd better let someone else drive. After all, Harold here almost got us killed, driving recklessly like that. Would it be okay if our friend Phil drives? We'd all be a lot safer that way". "Phil" (Nick Adams) is Kutner's henchman. He gets behind the wheel and starts following the cop along a winding country lane. Then, at Al's command, he runs the policeman into a ditch and they head up to the mountains, to the Angeles National Forest by way of a closed mountain road.
At the summit they stop a weather station, run by the brother/sister team of "Luther" and "Terry Dolgin" (Peter Miller, Joan Evans). Terry knows Harold from his hot rod exploits in the Valley (the movie is set in Studio City). She's secretly in love with him - screenwriter's coincidence - but the bad guys take over the cabin and plan to stay the winter. Harold is forced to play along. They plan to stay for five months. then escape over the High Sierras. "The cops'll never find us by then". It's an epic set-up with a dazzling location, worthy of an A list picture, and Witney uses the mountain hideaway to create a series of power struggles, not only between the crooks and the good guys, but among the Brink's robbers themselves.
Far away from the threat of police intervention, Al Kutner's sociopathic tendencies come to the fore. He's played to the hilt by Jan Merlin, a toothy blonde Nordic type whom you've seen in many a movie and tv show. He almost always played a villian, and he's in Full Psycho mode here, beating and threatening the weather station siblings and Harold, and ordering around his sidekick Phil and Lynn, his moll. She in turn wants to protect Harold, because she feels guilty for involving him (shades of "The Secret Place" from the other night), and she's also jealous of Terry Dolgin, whose love for Harold is now out in the open and reciprocated. Only Kutner's animal aggression and the fact that he's the only one with a gun are preventing everyone from ganging up and killing him.
As the months pass, the victims grow desperate, fearing that when Spring comes, Kutner will shoot them all before escaping. Luther and Harold devise a scheme using the weather station's two-way radio. Assisted by Terry, they are able to send a message to the outside world without Kutner knowing.
Director Witney then stages an impressive endgame, having a snowmobile tractor come up the mountain to rescue the hostages. This reminded me of Scatman Crothers in "The Shining", except that this tractor is twice the size, and photographed from the ground up, to make it look huge. As it bounces around in the snow, Phil the sidekick tries to steal it. He has his own scheme up his sleeve, involving the discovery of a uranium deposit in a nearby hill.
That's all I'm gonna tell you, but it's a very inventive plot and the actors milk it for all it's worth. Regarding the mountainous terrain of the Angeles National Forest, I want to add that I hope hope hope someone is gonna make a movie out of "Norco '80", the book that was published last year about the notorious Norco bank robbery, which also came to a conclusion in the ANF. There's something spooky about the mountains up there, as anyone who's ever driven the Angeles Crest Highway can attest.
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "A Strange Adventure". It was posted by a Youtube channel called Kino Domain, and I don't know how they obtained it, but the print is not only razor sharp, it also fills the computer screen, just like a widescreen dvd. It looks brand new. Don't miss it! /////
That's all for the moment. I hope you had a nice weekend and I send you tons of love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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