Category Archive: CRIME
The Long Goodbye
(Raymond Chandler) I shaved and made some coffee and then parked on the settee to start reading this thing and then I got up and went back to the bathroom and stripped off my tie and shirt and sloshed cold water in my face with both hands and then went on reading and then fixed some more coffee and cooled it down with a slug of scotch and then I went out on the back porch and smoked a cigarette and that’s more or less where I got to.
Continue Reading →Klute
(dir. Alan J Pakula) (1971) Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) aspires to act. John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a hick who comes to N.Y. to find his missing friend, who may have availed himself of Bree’s services. Together, they make a strange town-and-country team, each taming the other. This very nifty thriller has a fine look and feel to it. The ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ is a (venerable) Hollywood cliché but Jane Fonda’s performance gives you a real person. Amongst the rest of a fine cast, Charles Cioffi as the sinister boss is a standout.
Continue Reading →The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress
(by Beryl Bainbridge) An odd, slight, oddly touching and slightly naff story of a road trip to oblivion, culminating in the death of RFK; but is the dysfunctional, libidinous Rose ‘the girl in the polka dot dress’ who exclaimed, ‘We shot him!’ as reported in the LA Times on 6 June 1968? Bainbridge’s last, almost finished novel is, unlike The Original of Laura, worth reading.
Continue Reading →Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans Visage)
(dir. by Georges Franju) (1960) Necrotic facial tissue was never so fascinating. Brilliant (well, in theory) plastic and reconstructive surgeon wants to fix his daughter’s face, ruined in an accident – but he needs replacement skin. That does not bode well for the the pretty young students of Paris…. TVC knows of no scene more chilling than when the callow student is treated to a handkerchief soaked in chloroform…
Continue Reading →Edge of Darkness
(Dir. Martin Campbell) (1985) Northern copper Ronnie Craven has picked up his daughter Emma from college and taken her home to eat ratatouille when a loony ex-con and informer jumps out of the bushes and shoots her dead, presumably meaning to kill the father. After (whilst still in?) the shock of this outrage, Craven starts to manifest numerous delusions, probably stemming from post traumatic stress disorder. For example, he thinks he’s a tree! He still converses with Emma. He thinks the murder-gone-wrong was nothing more than a front for a vast, labyrinthine conspiracy by the dark forces of global nuclear…
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