| Vintage Pulp | Aug 2 2019 |
Please help me. My husband is on death row and I need to save him so I can kill his cheating ass myself.
These two posters were made to promote the film noir Black Angel, which starred June Vincent, Dan Duryea, Doris Dowling, and Peter Lorre in a story credited to high concept author Cornell Woolrich. But we gather nothing survived from Woolrich except the ending. When a man is convicted of his mistress's murder, the jailed man's cheated upon but noble wife tries to prove her husband innocent with the help of the murdered woman's ex-husband, who, though cuckolded, agrees that the wrong person is ticketed for Old Sparky. They set their sights on shady nightclub owner Peter Lorre and decide to infiltrate his operation in order to find proof he was the real killer. Naturally, as this heartbroken and mismatched pair dig up clues and investigate shady characters, feelings get confused. As in many noirs, there's a final act twist, and the one used here is pretty good, helping to elevate an average thriller to something a bit more memorable. Within the genre it's a significant film, and reasonably enjoyable to watch. Black Angel premiered in the U.S. today in 1946.
Black AngelDan DuryeaDoris DowlingJune VincentPeter LorreCornell Woolrichposter artcinemafilm noirmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 1 2017 |
Curiosity mutated the cat.
The Creeper, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1948, has a sinister, attention-getting poster, which you see above, but the film is long on atmosphere and short on frights. It concerns a doctor trying to develop bioluminescence in human organs so they're self lighting and will make surgery easier. You read that correctly. He wants to make organs glow just in case you need to be cut open one day. But instead he ends up, through his experiments on cats, creating a beast that slinks around mauling people to death. We never see an entire killer kitty—that wasn't in the budget it seems—but we do see cheap stuffed animal paws fearsome razor sharp claws. Ultimately The Creeper is a mood movie—which is to say, if you're in the right mood it may work for you. A six-pack could help get you there. Something even more psychoactive could get you there faster. But even then we can't guarantee you'll enjoy it.
