Big Bad Love (2002) Post-cards from the Road...

The Dark Corner (1946) “Dames!” curses Frank, trying not to drop the c-bomb, “Babes! Broads! Chicks! Molls! Chippies! Dolls! Skirts! Frails! Dishes! Twists! Muffins! Kittens! Foxes! Tomatoes! Roundheels!” Frank was certainly glad he owned a dictionary of American slang, but was disappointed in himself. He knew she was trouble as soon as that two-bit piece of ankle shimmied into his office. She had a set of pins on her that went on til next Tuesday, and didn’t even take off for Rosh Hashanah. Her eyes were beautiful, they must have been, they couldn’t even stop looking at each other. To be sure this canary had a set of lungs that could dry-gulch a twenty-stone pug. Frank coulda seen it coming for miles. He did really. But she ribbed him up to take the fall anyway. And he still took it like glass-jawed palooka. He was such a rube.

But to see a nice bit of tail who isn’t giving her bird the bum’s rush, check out Lucille Ball in Henry Hathaway’s noir classic, The Dark Corner (1946). Mark Stevens (The Snake Pit; Litvak, 1948) is fourth billed as the shamus in question. William Bendix (Lifeboat; Hitchcock, 1944) and Clifton Webb (Laura; Preminger, 1944) round out the cast as the bad-guys. The flick came quietly out for Christmas 2005 (12/06/05). The Dark Corner is solid, classic noir. (Best line: "I could be framed easier than Whistler's Mother!") To say much would ruin the plot. But Webb decides to resolve his love triangle by using his wife’s lover’s nemesis (Stevens as P. I. Bradford Galt) against him. (Huh?). Lucille Ball plays Galt’s dedicated secretary and is the weakest link in the story. She loves Galt and is working tirelessly to help him. The trouble is, she is totally unbelievable in the role. Ball puts no feeling behind the role. She just says she’s in love with Galt. Despite his troubled past and his current problems. There is no passion. Why should we believe her? She just goes through the motions. Frank Trautman certainly can’t believe it. He’s never met a girl who would follow him through the slightest inconvenience, let alone a murder plot. And as of late, the broads are the ones devising the plots. Throwing bunko and Frank was the butter and egg man. A patsy. Anyway, you can’t go too wrong with your basic noir movie. But if you want to see one with some better photography Frank recommends Robert Aldridge’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) a Mickey Spillane tale starring Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer. It is a tad infamous in its making Mike Hammer into a “real” detective: he is a petty thug preying on cheating spouses in LA. Also the “great whatzit” at the center of his mystery has somehow found its way into Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). In any case, it’s only gaspers and eel juice left for our hero. Frank had swung and was croaked. Out on the roof for sure. Ready for the wooden overcoat. The real Harlem sunset.