Indicator’s Columbia Noir #2

Unemployed engineer Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford) loses his brakes driving down a mountain in Richard Wallace's Framed (1947)

Indicator’s Columbia Noir #2 box set presents another six movies, hovering between A and B pictures, from the late ’40s to late ’50s. Crime, romance and a society shaken in the aftermath of the Second World War provide a background for portraits of characters torn by guilt, paranoia, betrayal and moral uncertainty.

Recent Indicator viewing

Juliet Bristow (Gayle Hunnicutt) discovers a body in Pompeii in Richard C. Sarafian's Fragment of Fear (1970)

Indicator continue to release exemplary editions of a wide range of movies, from obscure genre titles to classics to exploitation and occasional failed experiments. Recent viewing ranges from Max Ophuls’ exquisite domestic noir The Reckless Moment (1949) to Blake Edwards’ taut thriller Experiment in Terror (1962) and Arthur Lubin’s surprisingly good Gothic romance Footsteps in the Fog (1955).

Two swansongs

Nothing goes right on board Stan's inherited yacht in Leo Joannon's Atoll K (1960)

A pair of Blu-rays from England showcase the final works of major artists who were considered at the time to be in decline: Laurel and Hardy’s last feature, Atoll K (dir. Leo Joannon, 1951) is a bittersweet mess which captures the Boys’ enduring charm while making their mortality all too clear, while Fritz Lang’s The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) comes full circle by reviving his Weimar criminal mastermind in a Cold War context which paved the way for James Bond’s high-tech thrills.

The good, the mediocre and the annoying

Calvin Lockhart as big game hunter Tom Newcliffe aims to bag a werewolf in Paul Annett's The Beast Must Die (1974)

A couple of recent disappointments from Indicator – excellent editions of two mediocre movies (Guy Hamilton’s Force 10 From Navarone [1978] and Paul Annett’s The Beast Must Die [1974]) – are offset by the terrific French television series of adaptations from the Maigret novels and stories by Georges Simenon, fifty-four feature-length movies centred on a magisterial performance by Bruno Cremer as the famous detective.

Shameless exploitation

Family retainer Isidro (Giuseppe Carbone) plays with the contents of the crypt in Mario Bianchi's Satan's Baby Doll (1982)

Shameless is a British label dedicated to exploitation movies (with a mission statement emphasizing sleaze and outrage) which has been issuing mostly Italian genre titles for more than a decade with mixed results in terms of quality; thanks to a recent on-line sale, I just binged some of their releases which cover the spectrum in terms of quality (both technical and creative).

Blasts from the past

Guest Post: From Film to Flipbook to Film

The transgressive art of William Friedkin

Recent BFI releases

John Dies At the End … and that’s not a bad thing

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