Saw this off TCM tonight. This came in their "film noir" series complete with a much-too-lengthy interview between the host and somebody I didn't know. I saw part of it and zipped ahead-thankfully I DVRd this some days earlier.
We start in Reno, where a woman, Helen Brent (played by Claire Trevor) has just gotten her divorce after the legal 6-week stay in Reno at a boarding house, where her hostess is a close friend of her next door neighbor, Laury Palmer.
Not long after, we see Laury being brought home by her date. She asks him in for a drink-wink, wink. She goes to her room to change while her date goes to the kitchen to get the booze out. Waiting in the dark kitchen is Sam Wilde-another guy interested in Laury, who he recently met. He orders the guy to leave, but the guy didn't listen, so he gets in a fight and kills him. Then Laury comes into the room and he kills her too. He leaves and shortly afterwards, Laury's dog is spotted on the street by Helen, who nicely brings him in.
When she sees the two bodies on the floor, she does what any friend would do...she puts the dog down leaving him alone in the house-alone not counting people who are no longer eligible for the census-and picks up a phone-to call the train station-she wants out of town right now.
Unknowingly, a man she meets at the train station is the murderer, Sam. There seems to be some bit of lust there, but she is engaged to a wealthy man back home in San Francisco, where she lives with her rich sister. (Sis is not her blood sister, they were foster children and the sister (Georgia's) father left her ownership of a newspaper as well as a mansion and money.
Soon enough, Sam tracks Helen down at the sister's. Knowing Helen is engaged, he decides to go for Georgia, getting her to marry him just weeks after they met. But he can't keep his lips off Helen and she kisses him all over the mansion, never worrying that they'll be spotted.
There's a private eye hired by the boarding house landlady, a close buddy of Sam's played by Elisha Cook, Jr. (Icepick from Magnum, and many movie roles) and many other complications.
As I understand the concept of "film noir" this is not it. To me, like some other reviewers I read here, it is a real melodrama. Sam is so psychotic he's ready to kill anyone who comes close to Helen, without ever having a clue why they went to see her. Helen wants to bribe the private eye to not let his client-unknown to her-to know who killed those two people in Reno. Helen is so wrapped up in Sam that she ignores her fiance so much so that near the end of the movie he finally tells her off. I thought if this rich boy was brighter, he should have dropped her about 3 reels earlier.
We have a cockamamie scene where Elisha Cook's character, named Marty, who for reasons that elude me, was constantly called "Mart" as though that were a common nickname for Marty, lures the landlady to some sand dunes far away from every sign of life in San Francisco-but you can take a cab to get there. There, he walks her from the street to the dunes where he pulls out a small knife and shows her that he plans to kill her. This rather large woman fights him off and runs away-before Sam shows up and offs his longtime close friend-just because he saw him go into Helen's room that night for a few minutes. He never even asked him why he went there.
That's the crux of why this movie is not one I'll ever watch again. I can deal with a psycho killer who's not the co-star, or who mostly behaves like a normal person, but Sam seems to have a brain freeze on all sorts of matters and kills first and asks questions...check that, he never asks questions. In his less lurid conversations, he annoys the heck out of everyone by talking as if he knows everything about everything. He gets into a big fight with his new wife because she won't let him take over running her newspaper, even though he's never been connected with a newspaper in any role higher than being a "paper boy" when he was a kid-if that much.
Georgia is the only one of the stars who seems at all likeable. Certainly not Helen, and obviously not Sam or the P.I. or "Mart." Well, Laury Palmer seemed likeable, but as anyone who got suckered into the TV series Twin Peaks 30 years ago knows, with that name, she didn't stand a chance. (That series focused on the brutal murder of a young woman named Laura Palmer.)
This film featured no dark barrooms or piers, no basically-good people who happened to hook up with someone who got them into trouble. It really isn't noir in my opinion. Even the scene at the dunes near the ocean were rather well lit for late at night.
By the way, someone has put in a goof that the scene at the beach featured someone rolling down the hill with their head on one side, but once they stopped and the stunt double was replaced by the actress, the body was lying with the head on the other side. This is an error no their part. If you watch it, you can plainly see that she stopped, with head on the left side, feet on the right and Mart standing farther from the camera than she was. When the camera switched, we were now looking from the opposite side, with Mart closer to the camera. The body WAS lying the same way. I believe the mistake was because they were in a hollow between two hilly dunes, and the person didn't realize we were looking from the opposite angle.
Cannot see giving this more than a score of 4.
We start in Reno, where a woman, Helen Brent (played by Claire Trevor) has just gotten her divorce after the legal 6-week stay in Reno at a boarding house, where her hostess is a close friend of her next door neighbor, Laury Palmer.
Not long after, we see Laury being brought home by her date. She asks him in for a drink-wink, wink. She goes to her room to change while her date goes to the kitchen to get the booze out. Waiting in the dark kitchen is Sam Wilde-another guy interested in Laury, who he recently met. He orders the guy to leave, but the guy didn't listen, so he gets in a fight and kills him. Then Laury comes into the room and he kills her too. He leaves and shortly afterwards, Laury's dog is spotted on the street by Helen, who nicely brings him in.
When she sees the two bodies on the floor, she does what any friend would do...she puts the dog down leaving him alone in the house-alone not counting people who are no longer eligible for the census-and picks up a phone-to call the train station-she wants out of town right now.
Unknowingly, a man she meets at the train station is the murderer, Sam. There seems to be some bit of lust there, but she is engaged to a wealthy man back home in San Francisco, where she lives with her rich sister. (Sis is not her blood sister, they were foster children and the sister (Georgia's) father left her ownership of a newspaper as well as a mansion and money.
Soon enough, Sam tracks Helen down at the sister's. Knowing Helen is engaged, he decides to go for Georgia, getting her to marry him just weeks after they met. But he can't keep his lips off Helen and she kisses him all over the mansion, never worrying that they'll be spotted.
There's a private eye hired by the boarding house landlady, a close buddy of Sam's played by Elisha Cook, Jr. (Icepick from Magnum, and many movie roles) and many other complications.
As I understand the concept of "film noir" this is not it. To me, like some other reviewers I read here, it is a real melodrama. Sam is so psychotic he's ready to kill anyone who comes close to Helen, without ever having a clue why they went to see her. Helen wants to bribe the private eye to not let his client-unknown to her-to know who killed those two people in Reno. Helen is so wrapped up in Sam that she ignores her fiance so much so that near the end of the movie he finally tells her off. I thought if this rich boy was brighter, he should have dropped her about 3 reels earlier.
We have a cockamamie scene where Elisha Cook's character, named Marty, who for reasons that elude me, was constantly called "Mart" as though that were a common nickname for Marty, lures the landlady to some sand dunes far away from every sign of life in San Francisco-but you can take a cab to get there. There, he walks her from the street to the dunes where he pulls out a small knife and shows her that he plans to kill her. This rather large woman fights him off and runs away-before Sam shows up and offs his longtime close friend-just because he saw him go into Helen's room that night for a few minutes. He never even asked him why he went there.
That's the crux of why this movie is not one I'll ever watch again. I can deal with a psycho killer who's not the co-star, or who mostly behaves like a normal person, but Sam seems to have a brain freeze on all sorts of matters and kills first and asks questions...check that, he never asks questions. In his less lurid conversations, he annoys the heck out of everyone by talking as if he knows everything about everything. He gets into a big fight with his new wife because she won't let him take over running her newspaper, even though he's never been connected with a newspaper in any role higher than being a "paper boy" when he was a kid-if that much.
Georgia is the only one of the stars who seems at all likeable. Certainly not Helen, and obviously not Sam or the P.I. or "Mart." Well, Laury Palmer seemed likeable, but as anyone who got suckered into the TV series Twin Peaks 30 years ago knows, with that name, she didn't stand a chance. (That series focused on the brutal murder of a young woman named Laura Palmer.)
This film featured no dark barrooms or piers, no basically-good people who happened to hook up with someone who got them into trouble. It really isn't noir in my opinion. Even the scene at the dunes near the ocean were rather well lit for late at night.
By the way, someone has put in a goof that the scene at the beach featured someone rolling down the hill with their head on one side, but once they stopped and the stunt double was replaced by the actress, the body was lying with the head on the other side. This is an error no their part. If you watch it, you can plainly see that she stopped, with head on the left side, feet on the right and Mart standing farther from the camera than she was. When the camera switched, we were now looking from the opposite side, with Mart closer to the camera. The body WAS lying the same way. I believe the mistake was because they were in a hollow between two hilly dunes, and the person didn't realize we were looking from the opposite angle.
Cannot see giving this more than a score of 4.